You are wrong. Merit sources only received smerit and they are not received a single merit for being merit sources. Your calculation, consequently, is wrong too. 8 smerits if distribute well will result in
8 - 4 - 2 - 1 - 0.5 = 15.5 smeris in total and only 15 smerit can be distributed.
AND? the essence of this has changed? I didn't count all the halves. The bottom line was that from 8 merites you can get 7 more, so I was not mistaken about anything, maybe the translation is not entirely clear.