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Fix abolishing council tax having no budget impact (#1153)#1508

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MaxGhenis wants to merge 4 commits intomainfrom
fix-abolish-council-tax
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Fix abolishing council tax having no budget impact (#1153)#1508
MaxGhenis wants to merge 4 commits intomainfrom
fix-abolish-council-tax

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Summary

  • Abolishing council tax now correctly shows budget impact
  • Created council_tax_applicable variable that returns 0 when abolish_council_tax is True
  • Replaced council_tax with council_tax_applicable in all downstream aggregation variables
  • Removed special-case abolish_council_tax formula overrides (now unnecessary)

Root cause

council_tax was a pure input variable with no formula. The abolish_council_tax parameter removed it from aggregation sums in both household_tax AND pre_budget_change_household_tax, so the reform-vs-baseline delta was always zero.

Fix

New council_tax_applicable variable: returns 0 if abolished, otherwise returns the council_tax input. All downstream variables (gov_tax, household_tax, pre_budget_change_household_tax, hbai_household_net_income, household_benefits) now reference council_tax_applicable instead.

Test plan

  • New test: abolishing council tax increases household_net_income
  • Test fails on old code, passes on fix
  • All existing tests pass

Fixes #1153

MaxGhenis and others added 4 commits February 23, 2026 13:58
The abolish_council_tax parameter had no effect because downstream
variables (household_tax, pre_budget_change_household_tax, gov_tax)
all applied the same special-case check, zeroing out the delta.

Fix: introduce council_tax_applicable variable that returns 0 when
abolished, replace council_tax with council_tax_applicable in all
downstream adds/subtracts lists, and remove the special-case checks.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Abolish Council Tax has no budgetary impact

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