[MaxGhenis]

WIP: Correct Minnesota's unemployment insurance taxable wage base from a flat $42,000 to DEED's published annual figures for 2014–2026, including $43,000 in 2025 and $44,000 in 2026.

The annual entries cite Minnesota DEED's History of tax rate factors. Minn. Stat. 268.035, subd. 24 sets the taxable wage base at 60% of the state average annual wage, rounded to the nearest $1,000. Sources read October 20, 2026.

Adds annual capped-earnings regressions and 2025/2026 cases with zero wages and wages below, at, and above each cap. At the model's existing 0.9% default rate, maximum employer UI liability is $387 in 2025 and $396 in 2026.

Plan:

• Add annual wage bases, anchored references, and a changelog fragment.
• Add annual and boundary regression coverage.
• Complete Minnesota payroll validation, one file per foreground process with thread caps.
• Hub: run the impact analysis.
• Hub: file parity follow-up.

Validation:

• Minnesota UI taxable earnings: 13 passed, 1 warning; exit 0.
• Existing Minnesota paid leave: 3 passed, 1 warning; exit 0.

Both YAML files ran one at a time in separate foreground processes with the requested thread caps: 16 passed across 2 files.

ruff format . (7,395 files unchanged) and ruff check . passed.

The hub will run the impact.

Limitation: the existing $42,000 pre-2014 fallback remains to preserve compatibility with the common UI selector, which reads every jurisdiction's parameter. This change verifies annual figures from 2014 onward; it does not verify earlier values.

axiom: pending: hub files parity

[DTrim99]

PR Review: Correct Minnesota UI taxable wage bases for 2014-2026

PR #10319 (author: MaxGhenis), head 1fb60e8a5f. This is a first review. The PR replaces Minnesota's flat $42,000 employer UI taxable wage base with DEED's published figure for each year from 2014 to 2026. It also adds a 13-case test file and a changelog fragment, and it rewrites the references. The PR has no comments or reviews yet. It touches no partner test file.

Path prefixes:

• P/ = policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/mn/tax/payroll/unemployment/
• T/ = policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/mn/tax/payroll/unemployment/

Sources read for this review (all fetched 2026-10-21):

• Statute: Minn. Stat. 268.035, subd. 24 (taxable wages) and subd. 23 (how the state's average annual wage is calculated).
• DEED: Unemployment Tax Rates, "History of tax rate factors". The table has one row per year, 2014 to 2026. The same page has the 2026 tax rate factors and a worked example.

Summary

What is right. All 13 annual values match DEED's table exactly.

• 2014–2024: $29,000; $30,000; $31,000; $32,000 (2017 and 2018); $34,000; $35,000 (2020 and 2021); $38,000; $40,000; and $42,000.
• 2025 and 2026: $43,000 and $44,000. The $42,000 figure is 2024's. DEED's 2025 row reads 43,000, so the PR's 2025 value is right.
• Statute. DEED's figures follow the statute's formula: 60% of the state's average annual wage, rounded to the nearest $1,000. The average annual wage is calculated by June 30 and applies to the following calendar year (subd. 23(b)).
• What the fix changes. main caps 2025 wages at $42,000 instead of $43,000 and 2026 wages at $42,000 instead of $44,000. It also over-caps 2014–2023. Example: in 2026, a worker earning $45,000 at the 0.9% default rate owes $378 on main and $396 at the head.
• Tests. I hand-checked all 13 cases and all 6 employer-tax outputs. CI passed the 13 cases on the merge with current main.
• Batch checks. The PR's comments pass the source-conflict ratchet. No state-gated key or income-source list is involved.

There are no critical findings and one should-address item:

• S1. Invalid Axiom line. axiom: pending: hub files parity is not one of the allowed forms. n/a doesn't fit either: the provision is statutory and the PR changes MN employer UI tax results. rulespec-us has no chapter-268 module and no matching issue. The PR needs a dispatch-ready pe-parity issue, with the line axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#<n> queued, or an encoder PR.

There are also three suggestions: the pre-2014 $42,000 fallback, indexing after 2026, and the "WIP" body.

Status.

• CI: 27 checks pass and 3 are skipped (the superseded 2026-10-20 run). None is pending or failed.
• Branch: 2 commits ahead of main and 18 behind, and it merges cleanly.

Critical (must fix)

None.

Should address

S1. The Axiom line axiom: pending: hub files parity is not a valid form

• Where: the last line of the PR body. The body's plan also leaves "Hub: file parity follow-up" unchecked.
• The rule (CLAUDE.md, "Axiom Parity"): a PR that updates or fixes policy needs encoded-correct, <rulespec PR> encoded, <rulespec issue> queued or n/a: <reason>. pending is not one of them.
• Why n/a doesn't fit:
  • Minn. Stat. 268.035 subd. 24(a) fixes the base by law: "'Taxable wages' means those wages paid to an employee in covered employment each calendar year up to an amount equal to 60 percent of the state's average annual wage, rounded to the nearest $1,000." DEED publishes the result of that calculation each year.
  • The PR changes household-level results. mn_employer_state_unemployment_tax feeds employer_state_unemployment_tax, then employer_state_payroll_tax, then employer_payroll_tax.
  • Precedent: New Jersey's commissioner-promulgated wage bases, the same statute-plus-agency-figure structure, were queued as pe-parity issues (rulespec-us#1623, Improve simultaneous-tax-equations calculation #1827).
• Why encoded-correct isn't available:
  • rulespec-us main (5796861e5) has Minnesota statute modules only for chapter 290. It has none for chapter 268, and no DEED UI policy files.
  • gh search issues in rulespec-us for "268.035" and "Minnesota unemployment" returns nothing.
• Severity: should. An invalid Axiom line is a merge blocker, not a model error.
• Fix: file an open, pe-parity-labelled, dispatch-ready issue in TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us, modelled on Improve simultaneous-tax-equations calculation #1827 or Add AMT parameters for 2020-2023 #1467. Then change the line to axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#<n> queued. Alternatively, run the signed encoder and cite the PR as encoded. The issue needs:
  • Target modules: a new-module request, for example us-mn/statutes/268/035.yaml, which follows the existing us-mn/statutes/290/0671.yaml layout. Add annual DEED guidance files if the encoder keeps published figures separately.
  • Corpus citations: Minn. Stat. 268.035 subds. 23–24 and the DEED "History of tax rate factors" table.
  • Verbatim law: subd. 24(a), quoted above, and subd. 23(a)–(b). Subd. 23(b) says the average annual wage "applies to the calendar year following the calculation".
  • Required outputs: the annual taxable wage base for 2014–2026 and per-employee taxable wages, min(wages, base).
  • Companion tests from DEED, not from PolicyEngine output: the 2025 ($43,000) and 2026 ($44,000) rows, plus DEED's own worked example on the same page. In that example, three employees each earn $50,000, "the first $44,000 of the $50,000 in wages they earned is taxable", and taxable wages are "$44,000 x 3 employees = $132,000".
  • Why queued: the blocker, such as the corpus scope, the signed release or billed-run approval.

Suggestions

G1. The pre-2014 $42,000 fallback

• Where: P/taxable_wage_base.yaml:3-4 (# Legacy fallback before the cited DEED history begins in 2014. / 0000-01-01: 42_000).
• What it does:
  • $42,000 is DEED's 2024 figure, and no reference supports it for any year before 2014.
  • It is unreachable in modeled years. FIRST_MODELED_YEAR is 2015 (policyengine_us/tools/parameters.py:9), and the 2014 entry covers every later year.
  • The PR body's compatibility reason holds. select_state_unemployment_tax_parameter reads every jurisdiction's parameter, and core's _get_at_instant returns None before a parameter's first value. Backdating would not fill the gap, because the 2014 entry already precedes 2015. Without a 0000 entry, a 2013 run would hand None to select.
• Fix (optional): set the fallback to the earliest verified figure ($29,000). Or reword the comment to say the value is an unverified placeholder that no modeled year (2015 onward) reads.

G2. The base stays at $44,000 after 2026

• The statute indexes the base to the state's average annual wage every year (subds. 23–24). The DEED figures rose by $1,000–$3,000 a year from 2021 to 2026.
• The head holds $44,000 flat for 2027 onward. DEED normally mails the next year's rate determinations by mid-December ("on or before December 15, 2025" for 2026).
• Fix (optional): add the 2027 figure when DEED publishes it. Or add uprating: gov.ssa.nawi with rounding to the nearest $1,000 as a placeholder until then. That index is already used in the tree.

G3. PR body housekeeping

• The body opens with "WIP:" while the PR is not a draft. Two plan items are still unchecked: "Hub: run the impact analysis" and "Hub: file parity follow-up".
• Fix: once the hub work is done, drop "WIP:" and tick the items. Or mark the PR as a draft until then. The parity item is S1.

Verified correct

• Every annual value (P/taxable_wage_base.yaml:5-17) matches DEED's "History of tax rate factors" table, row by row:

  Year	DEED	Head		Year	DEED	Head
  2014	29,000	29,000		2021	35,000	35,000
  2015	30,000	30,000		2022	38,000	38,000
  2016	31,000	31,000		2023	40,000	40,000
  2017	32,000	32,000		2024	42,000	42,000
  2018	32,000	32,000		2025	43,000	43,000
  2019	34,000	34,000		2026	44,000	44,000
  2020	35,000	35,000

  The page header separately confirms "The Taxable wage base for 2026 is $44,000." In 2021, the base and the experience-rating period (7/1/2015–6/30/2019) were both unchanged from 2020.

• Effective dates. January 1 of each year is correct. The base applies to each calendar year (subd. 24(a)), using the average wage calculated the year before (subd. 23(b)).

• References (P/taxable_wage_base.yaml:23-27):

  • Both anchors resolve: #stat.268.035.24 is the subd. 24 element on the Revisor page, and #toggle-4 is the "History of tax rate factors" accordion on the DEED page.
  • The DEED reference shows every value. The statute reference gives the rule.
  • Each reference is a single source with no page text in the title.
  • Dropping the DOL CY2024 "Significant Measures" reference loses nothing, since it only showed 2024.

• Consumers:

  • The parameter is read only through select_state_unemployment_tax_parameter(..., "taxable_wage_base") in taxable_earnings_for_state_unemployment_tax. That variable takes min_(payroll_tax_gross_wages, wage_base) for Minnesota, the default branch.
  • The result feeds mn_employer_state_unemployment_tax (rate × taxable earnings), then employer_state_unemployment_tax, employer_state_payroll_tax and employer_payroll_tax.
  • MN Paid Leave doesn't read this parameter. mn_paid_leave_taxable_wages caps wages at the Social Security base rounded to the nearest $1,000 (Minn. Stat. 268B.01), so the paid-leave tests and the test_payroll_contributions.py MN cases are unaffected.
  • No other test pins Minnesota UI earnings above $42,000.

• Hand-checks (all 13 cases, 19 expectations). The rate is employer_state_unemployment_tax_rate_override (default −1), so the 0.009 default applies.

  • 2014–2024 (T/taxable_earnings_for_state_unemployment_tax.yaml, cases at lines 3–83). Each case is min(100,000, base) and equals that year's DEED figure: 29,000; 30,000; 31,000; 32,000; 32,000; 34,000; 35,000; 35,000; 38,000; 40,000; 42,000.
  • 2025 (line 91). Wages [0, 42,000, 43,000, 44,000] give taxable earnings [0, 42,000, 43,000, 43,000]. The tax is 0.009 × those amounts: [0, 378, 387, 387].
  • 2026 (line 100). Wages [0, 43,000, 44,000, 45,000] give taxable earnings [0, 43,000, 44,000, 44,000] and tax [0, 387, 396, 396].
  • Boundaries. 2025 and 2026 each test zero wages and wages below, at and above the cap. The cap is inclusive (min_).

• Changelog. changelog.d/mn-ui-taxable-wage-base.fixed.md is a top-level fragment, and fixed is the right type.

• Batch lessons:

  • Source-conflict ratchet (Tie source-conflict markers to the register shared with Axiom #10287). The two new comments ("Legacy fallback before the cited DEED history begins in 2014." and "Annual wage bases from Minnesota DEED's History of tax rate factors:") match no CONFLICT_COMMENT_RE alternative. The ratchet also passed in CI on the merge with current main.
  • NH Add New Hampshire state supplementation for 2026 #10156 (state-gated keys): not applicable. mn_employer_state_unemployment_tax is gated to MN but is not used as a parameter key, and the selector compares state_code_str.
  • Integrate modeled state unemployment insurance into income flows #9558, Document disjoint health premium inputs and correct consumer treatment #10046 and OK Add Oklahoma state supplementation for 2026 #10165: not applicable. The PR changes no income-source list or wage definition. payroll_tax_gross_wages is unchanged and shared by every default-branch state.
  • Partner tests: untouched. The Household API Partners check passed.

Axiom line assessment

Invalid: axiom: pending: hub files parity (S1).

• Recommended form: axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#<n> queued, with a new open, pe-parity-labelled, dispatch-ready issue for Minn. Stat. 268.035 subds. 23–24 and DEED's annual figures. The required contents are listed under S1. Alternatively, cite an encoder PR as encoded.
• Not n/a. This is a statutory provision, and the PR changes Minnesota employer UI tax for every worker above the cap in 2014–2023, 2025 and 2026.
• Not encoded-correct. rulespec-us main (5796861e5) has no Minnesota chapter-268 module, and no matching issue exists.

CI status

27 pass, 3 skipping, 0 pending, 0 failed. I re-checked gh pr checks 10319 at the end of this review.

• The green run. Run 39608187729 (pull_request, created 2026-10-21 13:27 UTC) tested merge commit 99b32069, which merges head 1fb60e8a5f into fec98b87c8, current main after Count the FL and SD LIHEAP comments in the source-conflict ratchet baseline #10334.
• The skipped run. The three skipped checks are the umbrella jobs of the earlier run 39517389189 (2026-10-20 23:48 UTC) at the same head.
• Where the Minnesota tests ran. Baseline states-shard-1, batch 7/14 (states/mn), passed all 13 cases of T/taxable_earnings_for_state_unemployment_tax.yaml and the three paid-leave cases. Quick Feedback selected and passed the same file.
• Guards. Rest (Python, shard-1 + variables) passed test_source_conflicts.py, including test_conflict_sounding_comments_do_not_grow.
• Known main-caused failure. Not applicable: the run started after 13:24 UTC on 2026-10-21, and the ratchet passed.
• Locally: I ran no tests or model probes. The CI run is green at the current head, and every expectation was hand-checked.

Branch status

• Position: 2 commits ahead of main (328d1721e2) and 18 behind. The merge base is 461f78e1ee.
• Merge: clean. git merge-tree --write-tree PolicyEngine/main 1fb60e8a5f exits 0 (tree ead0f6b5f5). The PR's three files are untouched on main since the merge base.

0 critical, 1 should and 3 suggestions are open at this head.

Verdict: REQUEST_CHANGES

[DTrim99]

All 13 annual values match DEED's history table (29k in 2014 through 43k in 2025 and 44k in 2026), the statute anchors resolve, and all 19 expectations hand-check. One should-address item: 'axiom: pending: hub files parity' isn't a valid axiom line. This is statutory (Minn. Stat. 268.035 subds. 23-24) and changes employer UI tax, so please file a dispatch-ready pe-parity issue and mark it queued. Three suggestions, including indexing past 2026. Full report in the comment above.