[MaxGhenis]

This PR applies SSI's $20 general income exclusion once when a claimant receives in-kind support and an ineligible spouse has income. The model now counts that support in both countable-income budgets whose difference gives the deemed amount.

SSA combines the claimant's support with the couple's unearned income under POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.a. SSA then applies one exclusion under SI 01320.400 B.1.e, 20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2) and 416.1124(c)(12).

For example, in January 2026, a claimant receives shelter support at the $258.50 presumed maximum value and an ineligible spouse earns $2,000 monthly. Countable income comes to $1,206: ($258.50 − $20) + ($2,000 − $65) / 2. SSI falls from $295 to $285. The $662.67 individual-only limit remains above that payment.

The model counts the SSI payment as income for other programs, among them SNAP and Oklahoma's State Supplemental Payment, so this PR changes those benefits too. For example, in January 2026, an aged claimant receives shelter support and a 62-year-old spouse receives $700 monthly from Social Security. SSI falls from $572.50 to $552.50: $1,491 − ($258.50 + $700 − $20). The Oklahoma supplement for that couple rises from $21 to $40 because SSI falls by $20. Combined countable income of $1,491 falls $41 short of Oklahoma's $1,532 standard for an individual with an ineligible spouse, and Oklahoma caps the payment at $40 (OKDHS Appendix C-1, Schedule VIII.A).

This addresses the ISM finding in #10243. Its separate spouse-eligibility finding remains open.

Ineligible-parent test

is_ssi_ineligible_parent (#10630) adds a spouse's deemed income to a parent's own income and leaves in-kind support out of that own income. In-kind support depends on the living arrangement, and the living arrangement depends on is_ssi_ineligible_parent. If the test read the new monthly budgets, which count in-kind support, every SSI calculation would raise a cycle error. The test now computes the spouse's deemed amount with main's annual formula, without in-kind support, so its results match main's. It still takes a supplied, neutralized or abolished annual ssi_income_deemed_from_ineligible_spouse.

Invariants and validation

• With baseline parameters and annual cash inputs, results without ISM match an independent calculation of main's formula within $0.01.
• With nonnegative income, fixed ISM and active deeming, combined countable income never falls when any claimant or spouse income rises.
• SSA reduces combined countable income by at most $20 monthly through the general exclusion.
• SSI never exceeds the individual-only payment limit in 416.1163(e)(2).
• Computed annual deemed income equals the sum of monthly budgets. Calculated annual aggregates cannot replace a month's budget, and supplied legacy annual inputs retain their units.
• is_ssi_ineligible_parent reads the same incomes as on main, and main's 27 cases for it pass unchanged.
• A supplied annual deemed amount decides is_ssi_ineligible_parent, including on a branch that supplies it after the simulation has calculated the test.

Pull request run 43624137892 at 1a83b5ce4d passed all 37 jobs on GitHub's merge with main 99d740496b.

test_ssi_spousal_ism_invariants.py checks the first five properties with generated vectorized households. It also checks that a branch override replaces cached monthly budgets and a cached ineligible-parent result, and that the input adapter honors dated abolition switches. The new monthly deemed-income YAML covers cash-income combinations, both sides of the $20 exclusion, and one-month support. Two new cases in is_ssi_ineligible_parent.yaml compute SSI for a parent with shelter support, an earning spouse and a disabled child, and for a parent whose supplied deemed amount fails the test. Case 16 in Oklahoma's ssp/integration.yaml now expects $552.50 of SSI, $1,491 of combined countable income and a $40 supplement.

Methodology choices

• Preserve the existing annual public variable and add a derived monthly variable. Monthly readers use the monthly value; annual readers receive the sum. The new derived amount defaults to zero.
• Reuse the annual-input adapter pattern from Limit SSI ineligible-child allocations to co-resident children and compute SSI and Medicaid deeming by month #10146 for supplied-input provenance, cache dependencies and neutralization. Preserve monthly abolition switches on the annual name as well.
• Include claimant ISM in both budgets at the deeming PMV. SSA uses the regular individual PMV for the separate no-deeming limit under POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.b.
• Treat spouse unearned-income cases as intended corrections when the claimant's cash unearned income leaves some general exclusion unused. Claimant cash unearned income of at least $20 preserves existing results.
• Hold ISM and deeming status fixed for income monotonicity. The existing PMV changes when deeming begins; this PR preserves that threshold treatment.
• Sum monthly budgets for annual totals, including dated reforms. Retain the existing annual allocation and deeming-status inputs. This change does not revise spouse eligibility, allocations or retrospective income timing.
• Leave in-kind support out of both halves of the ineligible-parent income test, as main does. For example, a parent with no cash income receives shelter support all year and the spouse earns $36,700. The model counts $1,735.17 a month toward the parent's SSI, above the $1,491 couple rate, and pays the parent nothing. The parent test counts ($36,700 − $240 − $780) / 2 = $17,840 a year, within $17,892, so the model treats the parent as eligible and deems nothing to a disabled child. Under 20 CFR 416.1166(e)(2), SSA deems the spouse's remaining income to the child when the parent does not qualify. Main has the same gap.
• Follow the agreeing regulation and SSA instructions. No source conflict requires a register entry.

State readers and merge coordination

Monthly readers include SSI countable income, the individual-only limit, the shared supplement helper, California CAPI, Kentucky SSP, Maryland imputed SSI and Texas supplement eligibility.

Three other formulas on main read the annual name. Maryland's PAA countable income and Medicaid's medically needy spouse adjustment (#10640) still read it and receive the sum of the monthly budgets. is_ssi_ineligible_parent (#10630) computes its own amount without in-kind support.

Where a state budgets a couple together, the medically needy adjustment swaps SSI's deemed amount for its own, which leaves out in-kind support. Those budgets keep main's values, so they still apply a second $20 exclusion when the claimant's cash unearned income leaves some of the first unused. #10935 tracks that second exclusion. A couple split by a facility counts no spouse income, and other states read ssi_countable_income unadjusted, so both apply one exclusion.

The shared helper serves California, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. Colorado uses separate deeming calculations and still offsets supplements by federal SSI.

Coordinate overlapping work in #10146, #10532 and #10382. Retain this ISM addition when incorporating #10146's broader monthly deeming changes. #10809 changes adjacent California and Maryland ISM readers.

Microsimulation impact

We estimate that this branch changes no SSI or state supplement payment in 2026 on the default dataset: SSI totals $56.68bn on both sides, and no record's SSI changes by a cent. Countable income and income deemed from an ineligible spouse move by at most $0.19 per person over the year. The default dataset gives $0 of California's CAPI and of Kentucky's, Maryland's and Texas's supplements on both sides. We compared main at f926615321 with this branch at 1a83b5ce4d.

Output	Main total	Change	Records changed (weighted)
ssi	$56.68bn	$0	0 (0)
ssi_countable_income	$4,304.1bn	+$2,324	373 (787,024)
ssi_income_deemed_from_ineligible_spouse	$402.5bn	+$868	1,239 (2,562,266)
ca_capi	$0	$0	0 (0)
ky_ssp	$0	$0	0 (0)
md_paa	$0	$0	0 (0)
tx_ssi_state_supplement	$0	$0	0 (0)
state_income_tax	$576.5bn	$0	0 (0)
income_tax	$2,594.9bn	$0	0 (0)
household_benefits	$2,060.2bn	-$3	0 (0)
household_net_income	$17,246.8bn	+$22	0 (0)

Axiom parity

axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#2240 queued (20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2), with POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.a and SI 01320.400 B.1.e: one $20 general exclusion across the couple's unearned income, the claimant's in-kind support included; the pinned corpus release lacks 20 CFR part 416)

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[MaxGhenis]

US + core hub merge audit, us#10837 at 1a83b5ce4dd4c9e01cda9b3137fcc4cb8d30e9cb (squash): Apply SSI's general exclusion once under spousal deeming.

• Reviews:
  • The PR has no GitHub reviews. Three independent review rounds ran outside GitHub, with fix rounds between them.
  • The first round, at 9e7c819cae, read POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.a and SI 01320.400 B.1.e and 20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2) and 416.1124(c)(12), and confirmed the PR's reading. It computed the January 2026 example by hand and compared the head with the merge base on a set of households. SSI moved from $295 to $285 in the wages example and from $572.50 to $552.50 with a $700 spouse pension. Results held for a claimant with at least $20 of cash unearned income, at least $85 of earnings or no in-kind support.
  • It found that the head merged with main formed a formula cycle. Deem income from a disabled parent who is not eligible for SSI #10630, which merged after the branch's base, made is_ssi_ineligible_parent read the annual deemed amount, and the living arrangement behind in-kind support reads that test. On the merged tree, SSI for a single aged person with no income raised a cycle error, and all ten YAML files it ran failed. It also asked for CI at the head, a population estimate, companion rows on Encode the SSI spousal-deeming benefit limit (20 CFR 416.1163(d)-(f)) and SSI couple definitions (416.1801(c), 416.1806, 416.1160(d)) (PE-US #10138 parity) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#1706 and the two newer readers in the description.
  • The fix round, through 833c81aaf6, merged main at f926615321 and gave is_ssi_ineligible_parent a deemed amount that repeats main's annual formula without in-kind support. It added a YAML case that computes SSI for a parent with shelter support, an earning spouse and a disabled child. It added a case where a supplied annual amount decides the test, and a Python test for a branch that supplies that amount later. It dropped a dead fallback around Core's private store call and added in-kind support to the README's deeming steps.
  • The second round, at 833c81aaf6, reproduced the cycle on the earlier head merged with main, where all 27 of main's parent cases failed. At the new head, alone and merged with main at 3ab9b19a11, all eight of its households computed. is_ssi_ineligible_parent matched main in five parent households, and main's 27 cases passed unchanged. All 279 cases and tests in 12 files passed at the head.
  • Each of its three mutants failed a test: the parent test reading the annual name again, the helper ignoring a supplied amount, and the adapter without its store record. It recomputed the two new parent cases by hand from POMS SI 01320.150 and 20 CFR 416.1163, 416.1165 and 416.1166.
  • It listed no blocking code finding and asked for three landing steps. CI had skipped every job while the PR stayed a draft, the description had no population estimate, and its axiom: line used the form for outside contributors.
  • I then marked the PR ready. CI at 833c81aaf6, run 43616877517, failed one case: Oklahoma's supplement Case 16 still expected main's $572.50 of SSI, which took the second exclusion. A fix round changed only that case's expected values and comments at 1a83b5ce4d: SSI $552.50, combined countable income $1,491 and a $40 supplement. It also added an Oklahoma paragraph to the description.
  • The third round approved 1a83b5ce4d. It recomputed Case 16 by hand from POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.a and SI 01320.400 B.1.e, 20 CFR 416.1163(e)(2), OHCA 317:35-5-42 and OKDHS Appendix C-1. A mutant that drops the claimant's in-kind support from both deeming budgets, which restores the second $20, failed Case 16 and passed the file's other 18 cases.
  • It scanned the 49 test files that set in-kind support for cases that pair a claimant's presumed-value support with an ineligible spouse's income. It found none beyond this PR's own cases and Case 16. CI run 43624137892 passed all 37 jobs on the head merged into main at 99d740496b, under Core 3.36.0.
  • It raised one minor note: formulas in 38 state folders read ssi, so programs beyond Oklahoma's supplement move too. The description now says the model counts SSI as income for other programs, among them SNAP.
  • At landing I added the estimate and filed Encode the claimant's in-kind support in SSI's couple computation under spousal deeming (20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2), 416.1124(c)(12), 416.1112(c)(4); POMS SI 01320.150 B.1, SI 01320.400 B.1.e) (PE-US #10837) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#2240 with companion rows. A comment on Encode the SSI spousal-deeming benefit limit (20 CFR 416.1163(d)-(f)) and SSI couple definitions (416.1801(c), 416.1806, 416.1160(d)) (PE-US #10138 parity) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#1706 links it, and one on Encode Oklahoma's State Supplemental Payment (OAC 340:15-1-4, 340:15-1-5; OAC 317:35-5-42; OKDHS Appendix C-1 Schedule VIII): the $40 cap, case-type standards and couple income test (PE-US PR 10165) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#1780 updates Case 16. I filed The model takes SSI's $20 general income exclusion twice in a medically needy couple's budget when the applicant has in-kind support and less than $20 a month of other unearned income #10935 and The model leaves a working student's earned income exclusion out of SSI spousal deeming and pays up to $42.50 a month less #10936, linked the first from the description and changed the axiom: line to queued.
• Methodology choices for maintainers:
  • The ineligible-parent test leaves in-kind support out of the parent's own income and of the spouse's deemed amount, as main does. In-kind support depends on the living arrangement, which reads the test, so counting it there would close a cycle. For example, a parent has shelter support all year and a spouse who earns $36,700. The model counts $1,735.17 a month toward the parent's SSI, above the $1,491 couple rate, and pays the parent nothing. The test counts ($36,700 − $240 − $780) / 2 = $17,840 a year, within $17,892, so the model deems nothing to a disabled child. Under 20 CFR 416.1166(e)(2), SSA deems the spouse's remaining income to that child.
  • The claimant's in-kind support enters both deeming budgets at no more than one-sixth of the couple rate plus $10, under POMS SI 01320.150 B.1.a. The individual-only limit of 416.1163(e)(2) keeps the regular presumed maximum value, one-third of the individual rate plus $20, under B.1.b.
  • Results change for some claimants with in-kind support and less than $20 of cash unearned income, by up to $20 a month. For example, a claimant with no cash income and shelter support at the presumed value gets $10 less SSI when the spouse earns $2,000 a month and $20 less when the spouse has a $700 pension. Programs that count SSI as income move with it. In Oklahoma's Case 16, SSI falls from $572.50 to $552.50 and the supplement rises from $21 to its $40 maximum.
  • The annual ssi_income_deemed_from_ineligible_spouse stays public and sums the months. A supplied annual amount still overrides the formula, and the monthly variable spreads it evenly. The adapter that reads it calls Core's private Holder._record_store, so a branch that supplies its first annual amount drops cached monthly budgets. Core 3.36.0 keeps that method.
  • Deeming status and the spouse's income after allocations stay annual, so each month counts one-twelfth of that income. The presumed maximum value still changes when deeming begins, as on main. The PR changes no spouse eligibility, allocation or payment timing rule.
  • In states that budget a couple together, the medically needy spouse adjustment replaces SSI's deemed amount with its own, which leaves in-kind support out. Those budgets keep main's values and the second $20 exclusion.
• Gates checked live at merge:
  • gh pr checks exits 0;
  • the latest Pull request run at the head, 43624137892, passed and tested this head merged into main at 99d740496b;
  • MERGEABLE;
  • not a draft;
  • no reviewer's latest review requests changes;
  • the semantic-overlap guard: since 99d740496b, main has changed no area this PR touches. Between the PR's merge base f926615321 and main at 61c743cb61, main changed 314 files and none of the 22 this PR touches. Main changed nothing under variables/gov/ssa/ssi, variables/gov/hhs/medicaid or the California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Texas program folders this PR touches. Fill IRS SOI uprating series gaps with Publication 1304 actuals #10128 added 2015 to 2021 values to gov/ssa/uprating.yaml, and Project statutory amounts from their base year with base-mode uprating #10783 raised the Core requirement to 3.36.0. The SSI rate files hold explicit values through 2027 and didn't change, and Core 3.36.0 keeps both names that _annual_input.py imports or calls. When it infers a tax unit's spouse, Ignore dependent separation when inferring the tax unit spouse #9932 now ignores is_separated for members other than the head and the spouse candidate. is_ssi_eligible_spouse reads that role, and no case in this PR has a separated member. Limit SSI ineligible-child allocations to co-resident children and compute SSI and Medicaid deeming by month #10146, Include farm and partnership earnings in SSI and correct loss netting #10532 and Fix SSI interest and dividend exclusions #10382, which change files this PR touches, haven't landed. The branch merges into main at 61c743cb61 without conflict;
  • the merge pins the head.
• Impact: we estimate no change in 2026 on the default dataset. SSI totals $56.68bn at main f926615321 and at 1a83b5ce4d, and no record's SSI changes by a cent. Countable income and income deemed from an ineligible spouse move by at most $0.19 per person over the year. The default dataset gives $0 of California's CAPI and of Kentucky's, Maryland's and Texas's supplements on both sides.
• Next:
  • Limit SSI ineligible-child allocations to co-resident children and compute SSI and Medicaid deeming by month #10146 adds its own monthly deemed variable, whose budgets leave out in-kind support, and its own _annual_input.py; it conflicts with this head in 10 files. Whoever merges main into it should keep this PR's in-kind support in both budgets and its adapter, which checks dated abolition switches.
  • Include farm and partnership earnings in SSI and correct loss netting #10532 and Fix SSI interest and dividend exclusions #10382 already conflict with main and share files with this PR, so each should merge main after this squash. Read monthly SSI support in Maryland and California benefits #10809, a draft, shares no file.
  • The model takes SSI's $20 general income exclusion twice in a medically needy couple's budget when the applicant has in-kind support and less than $20 a month of other unearned income #10935 tracks the medically needy couple budget, which keeps a second $20 exclusion. medicaid_medically_needy_income_from_spouse needs the claimant's in-kind support in its own couple amount.
  • The model leaves a working student's earned income exclusion out of SSI spousal deeming and pays up to $42.50 a month less #10936 tracks the deemed "alone" budget, which omits the student earned income exclusion that the claimant's own budget subtracts. The gap predates this PR, and SSI spousal deeming does not exclude an ineligible spouse's student earned income (20 CFR 416.1161(a)(27)) #10521 covers the spouse's student income.
  • The ineligible-parent test still needs the parent's in-kind support without the cycle, as the first methodology choice describes. That needs an issue, linked from the description's "Methodology choices" item on it.
  • policyengine-core needs an issue for a public way to record a store, which _annual_input.py now does through the private Holder._record_store.
  • After the merge, mark the first finding of Fix SSI spousal deeming for in-kind support and for aged, blind or disabled spouses who are not eligible #10243, the double exclusion, done. The issue stays open for its second finding, an aged, blind or disabled spouse who isn't eligible for SSI.
• Axiom: Encode the claimant's in-kind support in SSI's couple computation under spousal deeming (20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2), 416.1124(c)(12), 416.1112(c)(4); POMS SI 01320.150 B.1, SI 01320.400 B.1.e) (PE-US #10837) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#2240 queued, a new pe-parity issue for 20 CFR 416.1163(d)(2), 416.1124(c)(12) and 416.1112(c)(4) and POMS SI 01320.150 B.1 and SI 01320.400 B.1.e, with companion rows from this PR's YAML. It and Encode the SSI spousal-deeming benefit limit (20 CFR 416.1163(d)-(f)) and SSI couple definitions (416.1801(c), 416.1806, 416.1160(d)) (PE-US #10138 parity) TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#1706 both write the 416.1163 module, so they should go to the encoder together. The signed encoder can't run yet. The corpus release that rulespec-us pins carries POMS SI 01320.150 and SI 01320.400 and no scope for 20 CFR part 416, which the corpus holds outside that release.

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