Unit's Net Income = $500

SNAP Benefits Portion for the Family Size = $200

Payment Standard = $800

In this example, the unit will be eligible for assistance and will receive $200 in FS and $100 in cash

The calculations:

$800-$500=$300 total benefit

$300-$200=$100 cash benefit

If the unit's net income was $700, the unit would only receive $100 in FS and no cash benefit.

$800-$700=$100 total benefit

$100-$200=<0, so no cash benefit, and all of the $100 total is food benefit

Units that are not eligible for MFIP (don't pass one or more of the eligibility tests, demographic or financial) have their FS eligibility and benefits determined by the standard (federal) FS rules. Furthermore, even if a unit is eligible for food benefits under the MFIP program, it may still chose to participate in the federal FS program instead.

Although the MFIP program is specific to Minnesota, TRIM3 has generalized it to be available to all states. The program rule PotentialFoodBenefits indicates for each state, by family size, the value of the food portion of the benefit (a value of 0 means the state has no such combined cash & food program). TRIM3 assumes that this amount is included in the value specified for the state’s Need Standard, Payment Standard, and Maximum Benefit. After a total benefit is determined, TRIM3 splits it between a "cash" portion and a "food" portion. Only the cash portion is reflected in the TANF summary tables (except for alignement table # 8), as well as in the various result variables that contain the amount of TANF benefit eligible for or received. The food portion of the benefit only shows up in the results variables PotentialFoodBenefitUnitElig and PotentialFoodBenefitEligFor. These "food" result variables, together with the "cash" result variables are used by the Food Stamps simulation to determine whether the unit chooses to participate in their state’s combined cash & food program, or instead chooses to receive no cash but stay in the standard federal Food Stamps program. See the Food Stamps documentation for details on how this decision is simulated by TRIM3.