17, part-time job
$612
more take-home a year
Earns $8,000. Pays no payroll tax until old enough to vote.
Draft for review. Estimates marked “needs a score” have to be checked by a budget analyst before this goes public.
Your Voice, My Pen
The math, shown.
What each money plank puts back in a Hoosier's pocket, how the number is worked out, and what it costs Washington. Every figure has a source or is marked as an estimate.
Three Hoosiers, one year
Worked examples at 2026 tax rates. Each one is built up line by line below.
22, first full-time job
$2,620
more take-home a year
Earns $40,000. Pays no federal income tax until 26 on the first $55,000 of pay.
Working parent with overtime
$917
kept or paid back a year
$720 from no tax on overtime, $157 in interest on a held refund, $40 from one core charge.
Gen Z first: taxes
End the payroll tax on workers under 18, and no federal income tax on a young worker's first $55,000 of pay until age 26.
A 17-year-old earning $8,000
- Social Security tax, 6.2%$496
- Medicare tax, 1.45%$116
- Kept each year$612
A 22-year-old earning $40,000
- Pay$40,000
- Standard deduction, 2026− $16,100
- Taxable income$23,900
- 10% on the first $12,400$1,240
- 12% on the next $11,500$1,380
- Kept each year$2,620
- Kept at the $55,000 limit$4,420
Take-home pay, today and under the plan
17-year-old today$7,388
17-year-old, plan$8,000
22-year-old today$34,320
22-year-old, plan$36,940
Each bar is a share of that worker's own gross pay. The 22-year-old still pays $3,060 in payroll tax.
What it costs. The teen payroll exemption is small: likely under $1 billion a year, based on roughly 2 million working 16- and 17-year-olds earning about $6,000 each. It also takes that much out of Social Security's income. The under-26 income tax break is the largest item on this page: roughly $17 billion to $53 billion a year. That range applies the share of income tax paid by 18-to-25-year-olds in past IRS data (0.64% to 2%) to the $2.66 trillion collected in fiscal 2025. It needs an official score.
Social Security: the deadline and the choice
No cuts for retirees or people near retirement. Young workers get the choice to put part of their payroll tax into an account they own.
Retirement benefits Washington can pay under current law
Through late 2032100%
After the retirement fund runs dry78%
2026 Social Security Trustees report: the retirement trust fund is depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032. Doing nothing is an automatic 22% cut.
What Washington spends per person, 2024
Each American 65 and older$40,050
Each child$6,860
A personal account, as an illustration only: $800 a year (2 points of the 6.2% tax on $40,000 of pay), from age 22 to 67, in today's dollars. Returns are after inflation and are not guaranteed. This page does not project a balance.
What it costs. Money that goes into personal accounts stops paying today's retirees, so the gap has to be covered another way during the transition. The share of tax, the offset to future benefits, and the transition funding aren't designed yet. This plank has no cost estimate until they are.
The IRS plays by your rules
The IRS pays interest on over-withheld money from the day it was taken, at the same 7% it charges you. No tax on overtime becomes permanent.
Interest on an average refund
- Average refund, 2025 filing season$3,167
- IRS interest rate, late 20267%
- Average time each dollar is held8.5 months
- Interest owed to you$157
Money is withheld evenly over the year (6 months on average) and refunded about 2.5 months later. Part of many refunds is tax credits, not over-withholding, so some families would get less.
No tax on overtime, kept after 2028
- Overtime premium pay in a year$6,000
- Tax rate on that pay12%
- Kept each year$720
The deduction covers up to $12,500 a year and expires after 2028. At the full $12,500, a worker in the 12% bracket keeps $1,500 and one in the 22% bracket keeps $2,750.
What it costs. Refund interest: up to about $13 billion a year if every refund dollar earned it ($265 billion refunded by mid-April 2026 × 7% × 8.5 months). The real figure is lower. Making the overtime deduction permanent costs revenue too and needs an official score.
The Opportunity Grant
A one-time investment of up to $25,000, with a caseworker, in exchange for a set number of years of ongoing benefits. Families opt in.
Cost per family
- Grant, paid in stages for real assets$25,000
- Caseworker, two years$1,750
- Total per family$26,750
- Ongoing benefits it replaces, per year$12,000
- Years to break even2.2
- Taxpayers ahead after 5 years$33,250
- Pilot of 10,000 families$267.5 million
Holds only if the family stays off benefits. The $12,000 a year and the caseworker cost are campaign assumptions, to be checked. The pilot exists to measure exactly this.
How it's paid for. The benefits each family trades in, a share of existing welfare block grants, and a federal cannabis excise tax. The Congressional Budget Office scored a 2022 legalization bill's excise tax at about $5.7 billion over ten years, roughly $700 million a year once running. That alone would fund about 26,000 grants a year.
If you buy it, you own it
End core charges. Your old part is your property.
Starter for a 2015 Dodge Charger, Indianapolis, November 2026
New: $203.99 + $10 core deposit = $213.99
Rebuilt: $163.99 + $40 core deposit = $203.99
The deposit is what you lose if you keep your own old part. Keep it, and the rebuilt starter costs exactly what the new one does.
$3 billion
Fraud losses reported by Americans 60+, 2025
5 times higher
Compared with 2020
$50,000
Indiana pays per year of wrongful imprisonment
99.98%
Share of police civil-rights payouts paid by governments
$28.4 billion
State cannabis tax collected since 2014
425,000
Full-time jobs in legal cannabis
What it costs. Ownership, repair, and core-charge rules cost the federal budget close to nothing. The cost falls on the companies that collect the fees.
The ledger: what's paid for and what isn't
An opponent will ask how this adds up. This is the answer as it stands today.
| Plank | Effect | Per year | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cannabis regulated like alcohol | Brings money in: excise and business taxes | + $0.7B to $0.8B | Scored by CBO, 2022 |
| Opportunity Grant pilot | One-time cost, offset by benefits traded in | − $267.5M once | Campaign estimate |
| No payroll tax under 18 | Costs revenue, and Social Security income | under − $1B | Campaign estimate |
| Interest on held refunds | Costs revenue | up to − $13B | Upper bound |
| No tax on overtime, permanent | Costs revenue after 2028 | not known | Needs a score |
| No income tax under 26, first $55,000 | Costs revenue | − $17B to $53B | Campaign estimate |
| Personal retirement accounts | Transition cost. Not designed | not known | Needs a score |
| Ownership, repair, core charges | No federal cost | $0 | No budget effect |
Counting only the lines with a number, the plan needs roughly $30 billion to $65 billion a year. The two “needs a score” items would add to that.
How it's paid for
Tariffs first. Money collected on foreign goods goes back to young American workers. Foreign aid cuts and recovered welfare errors are the backup, and nobody's benefits are cut to get there.
Billions of dollars a year
Tariff revenue, 2026 pace$185
What the plan needs$30 to $65
International affairs, including foreign aid, 2026$36.5
Food stamp payments made in error, 2025$10.1
Cannabis excise tax, once running$0.7
All bars share one scale. The red bar is the high end of the plan's cost range.
The funding math
- Net customs duties, October 2025 to July 2026$154.5 billion
- Full-year pace (÷ 10 months × 12)$185 billion
- Share of tariff revenue the plan needs16% to 35%
- Backup: each 10% cut to international affairs$3.7 billion
- Backup: recovering half of food stamp errors$5 billion
- Backup: cannabis excise tax$0.7 billion
Before the income tax began in 1913, tariffs paid for most of the federal government. Washington was then 2% to 4% of the economy and is about 25% now, so tariffs can't replace the income tax. They can cover this plan.
Sources
- 2026 standard deduction and brackets (IRS, via NerdWallet)
- IRS interest rate, fourth quarter 2026
- Average refund and total refunded (IRS filing statistics, via Motley Fool)
- 2026 Social Security Trustees report
- Federal spending per senior and per child (PGPF, Urban Institute)
- No tax on overtime deduction (H&R Block)
- CBO cost estimate, H.R. 3617 (MORE Act), 2022
- State cannabis tax revenue (MPP, via NORML)
- Cannabis jobs (Vangst and Whitney Economics)
- Fraud losses, Americans 60+ (FTC, via Retirement Living)
- Indiana exoneree compensation (Innocence Project)
- Police indemnification study (Schwartz, NYU Law Review)
- Fiscal 2025 outlays by function (U.S. Treasury)
- International affairs spending (PGPF)
- Tariff revenue, deficit and price effects (Treasury, CBO and New York Fed, via WJLA)
- Food stamp payment errors, fiscal 2025 (USDA, via Fox 5)
- Tariffs and the size of government before 1913 (Independent Institute)
- International affairs baseline for 2026 (OMB)
- Income tax paid by age group (Tax Foundation, IRS data)
- Teen employment (Pew Research Center, BLS data)
- Starter prices: Indianapolis parts store listing, November 2026, on file with the campaign.
Worked examples use 2026 federal tax rates for a single filer taking the standard deduction. They are illustrations, not tax advice. Draft prepared November 2026.