We moved my dad in with us after Mom died. Now it's time for him to renew his Medicaid. The paper asks if anyone files taxes in the household. Are we considered 2 households? This is crazy confusing.
PennyG55, as needtowashhair said, whether your family and your dad now living with you are in separate households depends on whether either of you will claim the other as a dependent on income tax forms. To claim someone as a dependent for tax purposes, you must provide more than half of that person's total support for the year, which includes "...food, clothing, shelter, education, medical and dental care, recreation, and transportation; and welfare, food stamps, and housing provided by the state." If your dad will file his own tax return and claim his own standard deduction, then you would have separate households and he can say on his Medicaid application that there is no one else filing taxes in his household. And the answer to the question is the same if he is not required to file an income tax form and you do not claim him as a dependent.
Is dad listed as a dependent on your return? Are you listed as a dependent on your dad's return? If not, then yes you are 2 households.
Household doesn't mean people living in the same house. If that were true, then a bunch of roommates living in the same house would be one household. They aren't.
Yes, the rules are convoluted. But in your case, it's pretty straightforward. A household generally consists of at most 2 adults(parents) and their kids. Once a kid is older than 19, or 21 in some states, they are no longer considered a "kid" and are thus no longer part of that household. Now if you have a household consisting of parents filing separately with a couple of kids, it gets mighty confusing since every person can have a different household size. 1 parent's household size can be 1, the other parent's household size is 3 and the kids' household size is 4.
Some forms make this perfectly clear by stating that the maximum adults in a household are 2, the rest of the members of the household are kids.
When ACA first came out, I was at a ACA fair and asked them this exact question. They told me that a household is determined by who's on your tax return. The same as IRS rules, with some differences. Just like MAGI is AGI with some differences.
No you aren’t separate households. Are they actually asking for your tax returns or do they just want to know who else file taxes? Your taxes won’t affect his eligibility, it’s based on his income and assets.
Household doesn't mean people living in the same house. If that were true, then a bunch of roommates living in the same house would be one household. They aren't.
Yes, the rules are convoluted. But in your case, it's pretty straightforward. A household generally consists of at most 2 adults(parents) and their kids. Once a kid is older than 19, or 21 in some states, they are no longer considered a "kid" and are thus no longer part of that household. Now if you have a household consisting of parents filing separately with a couple of kids, it gets mighty confusing since every person can have a different household size. 1 parent's household size can be 1, the other parent's household size is 3 and the kids' household size is 4.
Some forms make this perfectly clear by stating that the maximum adults in a household are 2, the rest of the members of the household are kids.
When ACA first came out, I was at a ACA fair and asked them this exact question. They told me that a household is determined by who's on your tax return. The same as IRS rules, with some differences. Just like MAGI is AGI with some differences.
Here's a longish read about all this.
http://www.healthreformbeyondthebasics.org/key-facts-determining-household-size-for-medicaid-and-chip/