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Confirm logic for standard deduction with blind spouse

Open MaxGhenis opened this issue 4 years ago • 2 comments

taxcalc currently requires that filers are joint to claim an extra standard deduction for aged spouses, but that condition isn't present for blind spouses:

https://github.com/PSLmodels/Tax-Calculator/blob/2ccfcb446d281aa8f733be59f591de931a41ad24/taxcalc/calcfunctions.py#L1150-L1154

This page suggests that they're treated equally. Is the taxcalc logic correct, or might the MARS condition be redundant?

cc @nikhilwoodruff re https://github.com/UBICenter/openfisca-us/pull/45#discussion_r702503015

MaxGhenis avatar Sep 07 '21 03:09 MaxGhenis

Per IRS instructions, those filling married joint returns can claim an extra standard deduction for an age/blind spouse and those filing married single returns can if some other conditions are met (spouse has no income, doesn't file a return, and isn't claimed as a dependent on another return).

Implicitly the current Tax-Calc code assumes these conditions are married single returns are met for those claiming a blind spouse, but not for those claiming an aged spouse.

There is little/no data to check that these conditions on married single filers are met, but one could think about adding these conditions to the logic if there were data.

jdebacker avatar Feb 28 '22 18:02 jdebacker

This should work:

num_extra_stded = blind_head + blind_spouse + (age_head >= 65) + (age_spouse >= 65)

MaxGhenis avatar Mar 01 '22 03:03 MaxGhenis