Count gross unemployment compensation and Social Security in South Carolina TANF

[DTrim99]

Summary

Closes #9677

South Carolina TANF counted only the federally taxable parts of unemployment compensation (taxable_unemployment_compensation) and Social Security (taxable_social_security). SC DSS counts both at their gross amounts. This PR swaps the two entries in gov.states.sc.tanf.income.unearned for the gross variables:

• taxable_unemployment_compensation → total_unemployment_compensation (reported UC, or modeled state UI when none is reported, from Integrate modeled state unemployment insurance into income flows #9558)
• taxable_social_security → social_security (sum of retirement, disability, survivors, and dependents benefits; excludes SSI)

These are the same variables the federal TANF list and the CO, DC, IL, ME, MO, MT, NC, ND, and TX TANF lists use. SC CCAP already uses them too. No other SC TANF variable reads UC or Social Security, and nothing else in the list overlaps with either variable, so nothing is counted twice.

Stacked on #9558 (merge that first) — the diff includes #9558's commits until it merges.

Sources

SC DSS TANF Policy Manual (Volume 65), Section 7.7, Sources of Income chart:

• SSA benefits: unearned, "Count gross amount. This includes Medicare premium but does not include recoupments."
• Unemployment compensation benefits (UCB): unearned, Count = Y, "This includes Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation and/or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance." The manual makes no carve-out for the federally taxable share.

I added both pages to the parameter's references.

Before and after (monthly sc_tanf)

Household	Before	After	Arithmetic (after)
2020, parent + child, $6,000 UC (below the $10,200 exclusion)	$237.59	$68.99	(704.58 − 500) × 0.3372
2020, parent + 3 children, $12,000 UC (taxable $1,800)	$311.21	$24.59	(1,072.92 − 1,000) × 0.3372
2025, parent + child, $6,000 SSDI (taxable SS $0)	$344.58	$142.28	(851.67 − 500) × 0.4046
2025, parent + child, $12,000 SSDI (taxable SS $0)	$344.58	$0	1,000 ≥ 851.67 need standard
2025, parent + 2 children, $3,600 SSDI + $2,400 UC	$354.36	$232.98	(1,075.83 − 500) × 0.4046

The UC change only matters in tax year 2020, when §85(c) excluded up to $10,200 of UC. In every other year, taxable UC equals gross UC for these households. The Social Security change matters in every year. Low-income TANF households almost always have provisional income below the $25,000 base amount, so their taxable Social Security is $0 and SC TANF used to ignore their benefits entirely. Expect lower SC TANF benefits and fewer eligible units in microsimulation. I did not run microsim locally.

Tests

policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/sc/tanf/integration.yaml:

• Case 5 now takes social_security: 3_600 as input instead of taxable_social_security, since taxable SS is no longer read. The expected $223.20 does not change.
• New Cases 9–13, appended at the bottom, cover the five households in the table. Each checks taxable vs gross UC/SS, sc_tanf_gross_unearned_income, sc_tanf_countable_income, sc_tanf_income_eligible, and sc_tanf, with the arithmetic in inline comments.

The SC TANF folder passes locally (40/40).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01LqCGPgxDukji8Bhs57c5rH

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (909176a) to head (aef5707).
⚠️ Report is 436 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff            @@
##              main     #9687   +/-   ##
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  Coverage   100.00%   100.00%           
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  Files            4         2    -2     
  Lines           76        26   -50     
  Branches         2         0    -2     
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- Hits            76        26   -50     

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[hua7450]

Waiting for #9558 to merge first, then I’ll approve this one.

[MaxGhenis]

Heads-up on overlap: #10184 (opened today) also fixes the South Carolina TANF unearned income list, and it touches the same lines as this PR.

It rebuilds the whole list from the Section 7.7 chart in the TANF Policy Manual (Volume 67, July 2026; chapter 7 is unchanged from Volume 65 apart from a one-page shift). It covers this PR's Social Security and UC swap plus the rest of what #9677 asked about ("check the manual for any SSA-specific exclusions"):

• gross pensions and interest;
• adds child support, alimony, VA, workers' compensation, disability insurance, survivor and railroad retirement benefits, and cash contributions;
• drops IRA/401(k) withdrawals, since Section 6.6 counts those balances as resources, and drops discharged debt;
• moves farm income to earned;
• applies the $400-a-year interest and dividend exclusion;
• excludes SSI recipients' income.

It doesn't depend on #9558, so it uses unemployment_compensation (gross reported UC, the gross amount on main today). It also moves the file to income/unearned/sources.yaml.

Whichever lands second can be rebased:

• If Count South Carolina TANF unearned income at gross amounts and leave SSI recipients out of the benefit group #10184 lands first, this PR reduces to swapping unemployment_compensation for total_unemployment_compensation in the new file once Integrate modeled state unemployment insurance into income flows #9558 merges, plus whichever of Cases 9-13 still add coverage (integration Case 9 collides by number).
• If this PR lands first, I'll rebase Count South Carolina TANF unearned income at gross amounts and leave SSI recipients out of the benefit group #10184 onto it and keep total_unemployment_compensation.

Merge order is up to you and the US hub; I'm not pushing to this branch.

[DTrim99]

@hua7450 #9558 has merged. This branch now merges current main (360c432) and drops #9558's two changelog fragments, which main's release had already consumed. The diff is now only the South Carolina TANF change: sc/tanf/income/unearned.yaml (gross total_unemployment_compensation and social_security, per TANF Policy Manual § 7.7), its integration cases, and this PR's changelog fragment. The 40 SC TANF cases and the unemployment-reader guard pass locally.

Heads-up: Max's #10184 rewrites the same unearned list from the July 2026 manual, so whichever merges second will need a small rebase.

[hua7450]

The two failing tests in the Python/variables CI job also fail on main and are unrelated to this PR's South Carolina TANF changes. I've opened #10221 to fix both separately; all 222 focused tests pass locally with those fixes.