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US Tax Prep

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.

Authority and mirroring

Section titled “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.

Coverage snapshot

Section titled “Coverage snapshot”

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

Section titled “Filing status determination — target: ~20–30 rules”
ClusterRule count (target)EnshrinedPrimary source
Single—0Pub 501 §“Filing Status — Single”
Married Filing Jointly—0Pub 501 §“Married Filing Jointly”
Married Filing Separately—0Pub 501 §“Married Filing Separately”
Head of Household—0Pub 501 §“Head of Household”
Qualifying Surviving Spouse—0Pub 501 §“Qualifying Surviving Spouse”
Considered-unmarried + continuation cases—0Pub 501 — multiple

Standard deduction — target: ~25–35 rules

Section titled “Standard deduction — target: ~25–35 rules”
ClusterRule count (target)EnshrinedPrimary source
Base amount per filing status—0Pub 501 §“Standard Deduction”
Age ≥ 65 modifier—0Pub 501 — Standard Deduction Worksheet
Blindness modifier—0Pub 501 — Standard Deduction Worksheet
Dependent-taxpayer limit—0Pub 501 §“Standard Deduction for Dependents”
Disqualifying conditions (MFS with itemizing spouse, nonresident alien, dual-status)—0Pub 501 + 1040 Instructions

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

Action grouping and applies_when coverage

Section titled “Action grouping and applies_when coverage”

The world model exercises the full rule shape across the two in-scope problem spaces (filing.determine_status and deduction.compute_standard). Each of these rules serves a single action; conditional activation happens via the rule’s own applies_when filter per World Model — Rule. Examples the bootstrap is expected to surface:

  • Action grouping. Standard-deduction rules belong to deduction.compute_standard; filing-status rules belong to filing.determine_status. A caller invokes one action per /decide request; cross-action effects (filing-status → standard-deduction) play out across multiple invocations on the caller side, not inside a single rule.
  • applies_when filters. The MFS-with-itemizing-spouse rule on filing.determine_status uses applies_when to fire only when spouse_filing_choice == "itemized". The age-65 modifier on deduction.compute_standard uses applies_when to fire only when the taxpayer’s age clears the threshold.
  • Tier classification (T1/T2/T3). Structurally disallowed combinations (nonresident alien attempting standard deduction) are T1 — unconditional hard-floor RED. Standard cases are T2. Soft signals (operator-flagged unusual patterns) are T3.

Provenance-tier distribution

Section titled “Provenance-tier distribution”

Rules carry two-dimensional provenance per World Model — Two-dimensional provenance: an authoritative-source dimension (Authoritative / Curated / Distilled / Observed) and a code dimension (the predicate’s lineage to the natural-language rule it was generated from).

Rules in this domain should overwhelmingly cite Authoritative-tier IRS publications; Curated (cross-referenced interpretation) is permitted but rare; Distilled and Observed are not used in this domain for today. The code dimension regenerates whenever the natural-language form changes or the configuration block values the rule depends on shift; both regenerations are verified at the implementation-readiness gate.

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

Section titled “Related reading”