Skip to content

Count dependents' MAGI in ACA and Medicaid household income only when they must file - #10108

Draft
MaxGhenis wants to merge 2 commits into
mainfrom
dependent-magi-filing-requirement
Draft

MaxGhenis wants to merge 2 commits into
mainfrom
dependent-magi-filing-requirement

Conversation

@MaxGhenis

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

WIP. Local YAML batches, microsims (2025 and 2026), invariant tests, Axiom parity and an independent review are still to come.

What's wrong on main

Both the premium tax credit and Medicaid count another family member's modified AGI only if that member is required to file:

On main:

  • medicaid_magi (which aca_magi adds) is tax-unit AGI plus add(tax_unit, modification). That adds every member's tax_exempt_interest_income and tax_exempt_social_security, and the latter includes all of a dependent's Social Security. It never adds a dependent's AGI. So a child's survivor benefits or tax-exempt interest raise household income, and a teen who must file because of wages adds nothing.
  • medicaid_magi_person gives the tax unit's tax_exempt_social_security, the child's benefits included, to the head and spouse. So Medicaid household income (medicaid_household_income) puts a child's benefits in the parent's MAGI even when 435.603(d)(2)(i) excludes the child's income.

Fix

  • tax_exempt_social_security_person (new): each person's own benefits that section 86 leaves out of gross income. For the head and spouse it is their share of their return's taxable amount. A dependent's benefits are taxed on the dependent's own return (Pub. 915 (2025), "Who is taxed"). It replaces tax_exempt_social_security in gov.hhs.medicaid.income.modification.
  • medicaid_magi: the head's and spouse's MAGI, with person-level additions summed over them only, plus the whole MAGI of each tax unit dependent with medicaid_person_is_required_to_file, floored at zero. The helper magi_household_income(tax_unit, period, parameters, counted_dependents) returns the unfloored sum. Keep a filer who can be claimed as a dependent out of the premium tax credit family, and apply each state premium program's rule #10041 can then pass required_to_file & is_aca_tax_family_member rather than subtract after the floor.
  • medicaid_magi_person: classifies additions by entity, so each person keeps their own benefits.
  • medicaid_irs_gross_income: adds dependent_taxable_social_security. A dependent's Social Security counts toward the filing threshold only to the extent it is taxable (Pub. 501 (2025), Table 2).

Examples (2025, parent with $40,000 of wages)

Dependent Must file? medicaid_magi on main branch
Child, $12,000 survivor benefits no 52,000 40,000
Child, $20,000 survivor benefits no (none taxable) 60,000 40,000
Child, $12,000 survivor benefits + $2,000 interest yes 52,000 54,000
Child, $20,000 tax-exempt interest no 60,000 40,000
Teen, $16,000 wages yes 40,000 56,000
Disabled adult child, $15,000 wages + $36,000 benefits ($4,000 taxable) yes 76,000 91,000

Coordination

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

MaxGhenis and others added 2 commits October 11, 2026 13:05
26 CFR 1.36B-1(e)(1)(ii) and 42 CFR 435.603(d)(2) count another family
member's modified AGI in household income only if that member is required to
file. medicaid_magi (which aca_magi adds) added every member's tax-exempt
interest and all of a dependent's Social Security, and none of a dependent's
AGI. It now adds the filers' MAGI plus the whole MAGI of each dependent who
is required to file.

The MAGI additions now take each person's own tax-exempt Social Security
(tax_exempt_social_security_person), so medicaid_magi_person no longer gives
a child's benefits to the parent. medicaid_irs_gross_income counts a
dependent's taxable benefits, figured on their own return, toward the filing
threshold.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Property-based and seeded-population checks: a Form 8962 differential for
medicaid_magi, the exclusion of dependents who need not file, the Social
Security identities, the unchanged formula without dependents, and agreement
with the person-level Medicaid household income on the tax-filer route.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

This branch has not been deployed

No deployments
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant