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352 (07/2026) Chapter 2:Eligibility • Section 5: Financial eligibility
Workers are required to determine if any of the military allotment available to the filing group should be excluded for SNAP because the military person is deployed to a designated combat zone. Procedures for determining the amount of military allotment to count: • Establish the amount of the military person’s pay available to the filing group prior to deployment to a designated combat zone.
Available means income the filing group received and could spend as well as any of the income that may have been direct deposited and automatically used to pay the mortgage, utilities, common bills, etc. Note: If, in the unlikely instance the military person was a member of the filing group immediately prior to deployment, that person’s military income needs to change from the gross earned income to their net military pay for this step. • For the following step, determine the amount of military pay the deployed person is making available to the filing group now:
If the current amount is equal to or less than the amount the household was receiving prior to the deployment to a combat zone, count all of the allotment as unearned income.
Exclude any portion of the deployed person’s military pay that exceeds the amount the group received prior to deployment to a combat zone. Add a clear case note explaining the amount excluded for combat pay.
Code the countable part of the military allotment in ONE (See Income Types QRG). Joe gets $2400 gross military pay a month. He is deployed (not to a war zone) and sends his family $2000 each month. The $2000 sent home for the filing group’s use is counted as unearned income for the filing group that remains in Oregon. Later, he is sent to a combat zone. He gets an additional $700 a month for combat pay, giving him a total of $3100 gross per month. He now sends the family $2600; $600 more than he was sending before getting combat pay. The portion of Joe’s pay that is coming from combat pay that he now sends to his family is not counted. Exclude the $600, and the remaining $2000 is counted as unearned income for the filing group. The additional combat pay is excluded when an absent military person with one of these two pay codes is deployed to one of the following combat zones: 301 Incentive Pay: Hazardous duty 310 Special pay: Duty subject to hostile fire or imminent danger Combat zones that allow exclusion 301 The Adriatic Sea 320 Kuwait 302 Afghanistan 321 Kyrgyzstan 304 Albania 322 Macedonia 305 Arabian Sea Portion that lies north of 10 N. Latitude and West of 68 East Longitude 323 Oman 306 Bahrain 324 Pakistan