Declared fiscal lifecycle ledger

Method, inputs and limits

Adds distinct baseline and incremental costs, subtracts separately declared funding offsets and discounts the declared annual ledger. Method version 0.2.0. Infer economic benefits, behavior, tax receipts or value for money from hypothetical funding offsets.

Visible mathematics / decision rules

annual gross cost = baseline cost + incremental cost (excluding baseline)

annual net funding need = gross cost − separately declared funding offset

present value of declared funding need = Σ annual net funding need / (1 + discount rate)^year

cost change = incremental cost excluding baseline + incremental outgoing transfers

net fiscal balance change = revenue change − cost change

incremental fiscal NPV = Σ net fiscal balance change / (1 + discount rate)^year; unknown revenue or transfers yield unknown NPV

What this result cannot establish

• Bounded implementation from supplied acceptance checks and restored CORE definitions; scope choices are explicit below.
• Nominal and real prices cannot be mixed. A rate with the same price basis is required. No inflation conversion is performed. Price reference year and year-zero valuation year are separate declarations.
• All input amounts and undiscounted sums use safe integer minor units; discounted outputs are rounded to 0.01 minor units after summation.
• Baseline and increment are exclusive declared cost scopes; this calculator cannot detect unrecorded cost categories or mislabeled duplication.
• Incremental fiscal balances exclude the current-policy baseline. Transfers use an explicit positive-outgoing convention and are separated from program costs. Unknown revenue and transfers remain unknown.
• Offsets are user assumptions or separately documented funding; they are not proven economic benefits. Manual accounting and discounting are equivalent.

What would falsify the assumptions?

• The conclusion fails if scope, price basis, annual timing or supplied costs are wrong.
• Audited expenditure and funding records can contradict the supplied ledger.
• Costs and offsets are separately reconciled; this does not conserve physical resources.
• Reproduce the ledger and discount factors in a spreadsheet.
• This is arithmetic, not a tested causal fiscal estimate or forecast.
• MAR adds no benefit if a non-AI ledger gives the same result; hidden or duplicated costs would show added risk.
• Assumptions fail if the supplied definitions, units, period, scope or source records are wrong or incomplete.
• An independent source audit or replication may contradict an input or the recorded dependency.
• This method creates no resources. Physical conservation is checked in the inventory and transfer ledgers; descriptive graphs and checklists are not resource-flow models.
• The same equations and review checklist can be reproduced with a spreadsheet or structured human-only process.
• This is deterministic arithmetic, a descriptive comparison or a structured governance check, not a fitted causal effect or forecast. Fictional inputs remain an exercise.
• Equal or worse measured errors, net review effort, disclosure burden or fallback under MAR would show no added benefit or added risk; no improvement is assumed.

{
  "observations": {
    "unit": "minor currency units",
    "origin": "synthetic",
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "SYN-001",
        "kind": "synthetic",
        "label": "Fictional demonstration B; funding offsets assumed",
        "url": null
      }
    ],
    "currency": "USD",
    "priceBasis": "nominal",
    "baseYear": 2026,
    "valuationYear": 2026,
    "costScope": "incremental-excludes-baseline",
    "years": [
      {
        "year": 0,
        "baselineCostMinor": 0,
        "incrementalCostMinor": 10000000,
        "assumedOffsetMinor": 0,
        "revenueChangeMinor": null,
        "transferChangeMinor": 0
      },
      {
        "year": 1,
        "baselineCostMinor": 0,
        "incrementalCostMinor": 4000000,
        "assumedOffsetMinor": 1000000,
        "revenueChangeMinor": null,
        "transferChangeMinor": 0
      },
      {
        "year": 2,
        "baselineCostMinor": 0,
        "incrementalCostMinor": 4000000,
        "assumedOffsetMinor": 1000000,
        "revenueChangeMinor": null,
        "transferChangeMinor": 0
      }
    ]
  },
  "parameters": {
    "discountRate": 0,
    "discountBasis": "nominal",
    "discountRates": [
      0,
      0.03,
      0.07
    ]
  }
}

{
  "baselineCostMinor": 0,
  "incrementalCostMinor": 18000000,
  "assumedOffsetMinor": 2000000,
  "netCostMinor": 16000000,
  "presentValueMinor": 16000000
}

Authoritative background references

• U.S. GAO: Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide — Published 12 March 2020. Estimation and sensitivity guidance; no endorsement of this implementation. Reviewed 2026-11-09. Reference, not endorsement or validation.
• CBO: Processes and methodology — Published government estimates differ from user-input arithmetic. Reviewed 2026-11-09. Reference, not endorsement or validation.

These sources inform definitions or review practices. They do not validate this implementation or endorse MAR.