Editorial Policy
Updated
This site publishes calculators and the writing that explains them. Both are held to the same standard, which is that anything stated as fact has to be traceable to a source that says it.
Sourcing
Figures come from the authority that sets them and nowhere else. For US federal tax that means the Internal Revenue Code, IRS Revenue Procedures and Notices, and IRS publications and forms; for Social Security it means official Social Security Administration releases. Secondary summaries are not used as sources, however convenient, and that includes well-known financial sites. A summary is where a transcription error becomes invisible.
Where a figure cannot be traced to a primary document, it does not go on the site. The tooling enforces this rather than relying on discipline: the methodology page describes the gate that blocks a build when an unverified figure is present.
How something gets published
A calculator ships when its arithmetic is covered by tests that check it against externally published results, its constants have been read from source documents by a person and recorded with the date they were read, and the page states its own limits. Explanatory writing ships when the mechanism it describes has been checked against the rule that creates it.
Nothing on this site is generated by a language model and published unread. Writing assistance is used, and every factual claim and every figure is checked against a primary document by a person before it goes live. That checking is the work; the drafting is not the part that carries the risk.
Review and updates
Each page carries the date it was last meaningfully changed. That date is derived from the actual revision history rather than typed in, so it cannot be refreshed to look current without something having genuinely changed.
Pages are revisited when the underlying rule changes: a new tax year, a revised limit, a change in law. Figures are re-read from the new source document rather than adjusted from the previous year’s values.
Corrections
A wrong figure is the most serious kind of error this site can make, and it is treated that way. When one is found, the fix takes priority over everything else in progress. Where a published figure was materially wrong, the correction is recorded rather than made quietly, because a site that silently rewrites its own history is not one you can check.
Corrections are welcome from anyone, and a pointer to the specific source you believe has been misread is the most useful form one can take. Get in touch.
Independence
There is currently no advertising on this site, no sponsored content, and no affiliate arrangement with any financial institution. Nothing here recommends a product, and no calculator result is influenced by anyone’s commercial interest.
If that changes, it will be disclosed on this page and on any page it affects, before it takes effect rather than after. The rule that will not change: a commercial relationship may never influence what a calculator computes or what a page says is true.
What this site does not cover
- Individual advice. These are general-purpose tools, and they cannot see your circumstances. Nothing here is financial, tax or legal advice.
- Recommendations of specific products, providers, funds or securities.
- Predictions of markets, rates or asset prices. Where a calculator needs an assumption about the future, you supply it and the page says so.
- Jurisdictions outside the United States. The rules modelled here are US federal rules, with state coverage added explicitly where it exists.