Rules

Rule-coverage overview for the tax-prep world model. This page mirrors the state of the published world model — it is not the authoritative source.

Note

This page mirrors the published world model — the rules in scope, their problem-space grouping, and their provenance-tier distribution. The world model itself lives in spectral.worlds and is authoritative; this page is a read-only reference summary updated when a new version publishes. For real-time rule authoring and candidate tracking, see the Operations app.

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Authority and mirroring

The world model itself is authoritative. This page exists as a reference summary — what clusters of rules exist, what’s enshrined, what’s still candidate-stage — not as a replacement for the Operations-app view.

• Canonical rule list: spectral.worlds rule corpus, surfaced through the Operations app.
• Canonical provenance: the envelope on each rule (see Source materials).
• This page’s job: give operators and contributors a one-screen overview of coverage — what’s in, what’s out, what’s in-flight. Updated per published version; not per rule edit.

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Coverage snapshot (pre-bootstrap)

The tax-prep world model has not yet been bootstrapped. Once the first enshrined rules land, the sections below will carry per-problem-space coverage summaries along these lines:

Filing status determination — target: ~20–30 rules

Cluster	Rule count (target)	Enshrined	Primary source
Single	—	0	Pub 501 §“Filing Status — Single”
Married Filing Jointly	—	0	Pub 501 §“Married Filing Jointly”
Married Filing Separately	—	0	Pub 501 §“Married Filing Separately”
Head of Household	—	0	Pub 501 §“Head of Household”
Qualifying Surviving Spouse	—	0	Pub 501 §“Qualifying Surviving Spouse”
Considered-unmarried + continuation cases	—	0	Pub 501 — multiple

Standard deduction — target: ~25–35 rules

Cluster	Rule count (target)	Enshrined	Primary source
Base amount per filing status	—	0	Pub 501 §“Standard Deduction”
Age ≥ 65 modifier	—	0	Pub 501 — Standard Deduction Worksheet
Blindness modifier	—	0	Pub 501 — Standard Deduction Worksheet
Dependent-taxpayer limit	—	0	Pub 501 §“Standard Deduction for Dependents”
Disqualifying conditions (MFS with itemizing spouse, nonresident alien, dual-status)	—	0	Pub 501 + 1040 Instructions

(Numbers fill in as rules enshrine. Bootstrap floor is 50 enshrined rules across the two problem spaces.)

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Rule-relationship coverage

Alpha exercises the full rule-relationship surface (depends-on, conflicts-with, qualifies) across the two alpha problem spaces. Examples the bootstrap is expected to surface:

• depends-on. Standard-deduction rules depend on a filing-status rule having decided the base amount.
• conflicts-with. The standard-vs-itemized election is a conflicts-with pair; the MFS-with- itemizing-spouse rule forces the conflict resolution.
• qualifies. Head-of-household status qualifies the taxpayer for a standard-deduction amount distinct from Single.

These relationships are first-class in the rule model (they move through the Evolution Loop like the rules themselves) — see World Model System — world-model.

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Provenance-tier distribution

Rules carry a provenance tier that reflects the source strength. Alpha-domain rules should overwhelmingly cite Tier-1 IRS publications; Tier-2 (IRS revenue rulings / procedures referenced for narrow fact patterns) is permitted but rare; Tier-3 is not used in this domain for today.

When the world model bootstraps, this section reports the actual tier distribution and flags any rules whose tier drifted due to updated sources.

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Related reading

• Overview — domain scope
• Problem spaces — what clusters of rules belong where
• Source materials — what publications back each cluster
• World Model System — the rule model itself