Exclude SNAP from California CARE and FERA countable income

[MaxGhenis]

California CARE/FERA countable income included SNAP, allowing a change in SNAP alone to move a household above an energy-assistance income limit. This excludes SNAP from both income-source lists (0000-01-01 and 2014-08-14), correcting all modeled years.

Sources and dates

7 U.S.C. 2017(b) excludes SNAP benefits from income and resources under federal, state, and local laws. The 2010 edition contains the same exclusion, supporting the earlier list. 0000-01-01 is the parameter's baseline sentinel, not a statutory enactment date. The August 2014 date governs the separate housing-subsidy correction.

The PG&E CARE/FERA application cited by the parameter supplies its broad gross-income definition. Its public-assistance wording is subject to the federal SNAP exclusion. Section 2A separately lists SNAP as a categorical CARE enrollment program; that remains distinct from counting the benefit amount as income. The June 2010 application also separates these enrollment paths.

Coverage and invariant

The two portable unit cases from #10033 cover a SNAP recipient in 2013 and a 2026 household exactly at the CARE limit. They depend only on the income-source correction. A changelog fragment records the historical correction.

Invariant: CARE/FERA countable income does not change when only SNAP changes. A local seeded property check varies annual SNAP from zero to positive amounts for 32 households across 2013, 2014, 2015, 2024, and 2026 (160 comparisons), holding all other counted income sources fixed, including wages and housing income. It also checks independently that the old list counts housing and the later list excludes it. The property script remains untracked evidence; policy examples use the existing YAML test framework.

Validation at b99a494bcc4959f50d9284e520321827053741f5:

• Both CPUC YAML files: 22 passed.
• All 36 discovered California partner files, including California and federal signatures: 127 passed. Partner files and expectations are unchanged.
• Local property check: 1 passed, covering all 160 SNAP-only comparisons.
• make format and git diff --check passed.

YAML files ran serially, one file per isolated Core CLI process, using the branch's preloaded country and Core baseline cache to avoid repeated expensive initialization. Assertions and reforms used Core's unchanged runner. The file manifest and logs remain untracked hub evidence. No microsimulation ran.

Hub microsimulation impact (current head)

A real microsimulation on the default dataset, main at the merge base 94fca350bf against this PR's head fcdb2464aa, for 2026. The runs went one at a time under the shared heavy-job lock. Sums are weighted.

Output	2026 change	2026 records changed (weighted)
ca_cpuc_countable_income	-12.77bn	300 (2,812,926)
ca_care	+0	0 (0)
ca_fera	+0	0 (0)
ca_care_eligible	+0	0 (0)
ca_fera_eligible	+0	0 (0)
household_net_income	+0	0 (0)
state_income_tax	+0	0 (0)
income_tax	+0	0 (0)
household_benefits	+0	0 (0)

Measured at the exact head fcdb246 against main 94fca35 (the merge base). Countable income falls where SNAP had been counted; CARE/FERA eligibility and benefit totals do not move in the 2026 microsim (both programs' benefit amounts are zero on base and PR there), so household net income is unchanged.

Comparison files are in fixes/10065-impact/ on the hub host.

Hub microsimulation impact

Pending: the hub runs it.

axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#1649 queued

[MaxGhenis]

Reopened by the US + core hub to start a fresh CI run at the same head. The previous run failed on test_spm_system.py, which broke on every pull request when policyengine-core 3.33.1 was released; #10069 fixed it on main at 20:42Z on 2026-10-10. Nothing in this pull request changed.

[MaxGhenis]

US + core hub merge audit, us#10065 at fcdb2464aae0d52b4db274c6109215f64faf5228 (squash): Exclude SNAP from California CARE and FERA countable income.

• Review: independent GPT-6.1 Sol review approves this exact head, with no P1 or P2 and no methodology choice (reviews-gen/us-10065/review-r2.md). The head is a plain merge of the approved b99a494bcc with main; the PR's three files are unchanged.
• Source: SNAP is excluded from income under 7 U.S.C. §2017(b), as the body cites.
• Impact: a hub microsimulation on the default dataset for 2026, merge base 94fca350bf against this head; see the body's "Hub microsimulation impact (current head)" section. Countable income falls $12.77bn across 300 records; CARE/FERA eligibility, benefits and household net income do not move in that run.
• Gates checked live at merge:
  • gh pr checks exits 0;
  • the latest Pull request run at the head concluded success;
  • MERGEABLE, not a draft, no CHANGES_REQUESTED;
  • the semantic-overlap guard;
  • head pinned.
• Axiom: the body's axiom: line (rulespec-us#1649 queued).
• Follow-up (P3, non-blocking): a SNAP-specific FERA regression case.
• --admin: used only because a required approving review is the sole block.
• Order: lands before Remove the BBCE net income test from California's Modified Categorical Eligibility #10036 and Apply federal SNAP heat-and-eat SUA restriction in all states #10033, which build on it.