The SIPP instrument asks tax-related questions to only one spouse in a married couple in order to reduce respondent burden.  Answers to tax filing questions are copied from one spouse to the other during data processing.  For copied cases in 2019 and 2020 data, status flags were incorrectly coded to 3 (“Logical imputation”) instead of 1 (“Reported”).  This applies to status flags for:

• Whether a person filed an income return during the reference year (AFILING)
• Whether a person intended to file (AWILLFILE)
• Filing status (AFSTATUS)
• Receipt of the Earned Income Tax Credit (AEITC)

Records of this type will receive the correct status flag value in 2021 SIPP data.