Editorial policy

This site tells people what will be left of their pay after tax. That is a question with a right answer, and getting it wrong has consequences — an under-withheld year ends in a bill, an over-withheld year is an interest-free loan to the government. So the standards below are not a formality. They are the working rules that decide what goes on a page and what does not.

1. Every figure traces to a primary document

A rate, threshold, wage base, allowance or benefit maximum is entered from the government publication that set it — never from another calculator, a competitor's article, or a news summary of a change. Where the primary document is a PDF bulletin with a form number, we cite the form number, because "the IRS says" is not a citation. The full list is on the sources page, and the calculation steps those figures feed into are documented on the methodology page.

This rule has a practical consequence that shows up in our content regularly: we sometimes disagree with the rest of the internet. When the Regional Transportation Authority sales tax change took effect and Chicago's combined rate moved, most calculators were still quoting the old rate months later, because they were copying each other rather than reading the bulletin. Working from the source is slower and it is the only thing that makes a site like this worth using.

2. Calculators and articles cannot disagree

The most common failure on tax calculator sites is a working tool sitting next to an article table that was typed by hand two years ago and never touched again. We removed the possibility structurally: every static table inside an article is generated at build time from the same engine that powers the tools. If a rate changes in the data file, the calculator and the article change together or neither changes. There is no path by which the two can drift apart.

3. We say what we do not know

Where a federal survey has not yet released a current-year figure, the page labels the reference period rather than presenting stale data as current. Where a calculator cannot model something — multi-state allocation, year-to-date effects, imputed income — the page says so on the page, not in a footnote. Where the law is genuinely unsettled or an agency has not clarified something, we describe the ambiguity instead of resolving it for the reader's convenience.

4. No invented experts

Content is attributed honestly. We do not invent a credentialed author, borrow a stock photograph and attach initials to it, or claim a review by a professional who did not perform one. Where a page has been reviewed by a named person with a real credential, the byline says so and the credential is verifiable. Where it has not, the content is attributed to the site's editorial team, which is what it actually is. The temptation to manufacture authority on financial content is exactly why so much of it cannot be trusted.

5. Independence

There are no affiliate links on this site. No payroll provider, tax preparer, lender or software company has paid for a mention, a review, or a position in a comparison, and none has been given advance sight of anything we publish about them. When we compare calculators on the calculator comparison page, the criterion is whether the arithmetic is right, which is a criterion no advertiser would enjoy. If the site ever carries advertising, it will be clearly marked as advertising, will not influence content, and the disclosure will sit on the page rather than only in this policy.

6. Corrections

Anyone can report an error and we would rather hear it than not. Send the page, the figure and what you believe it should be. The process from there:

• We check the claim against the primary document, not against our own previous work.
• If the figure is wrong, it is corrected the same day it is confirmed.
• Where a figure has changed materially, the change is recorded with its date on the updates log.
• If your report is right and ours was wrong, we say so plainly rather than describing it as a clarification.

A rate that changed because the legislature changed it is an update, not a correction, and the log distinguishes the two.

7. Review calendar

Tax content decays on a schedule, so it is reviewed on one. Federal brackets, standard deductions and the Social Security wage base are checked when the IRS and SSA publish in October and November. Illinois withholding tables, the personal exemption and IDES rates are checked when they publish in December. Everything is re-tested in January when the new year takes effect. Minimum wage ordinances, legislative changes and benefit adjustments are handled as they are announced. Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, and that date means a person actually looked at it, not that a script touched the file.

8. Privacy is part of the editorial standard

Every calculation runs in your browser. No salary, filing status, deduction or dependent count is transmitted anywhere, logged, or stored. There is no account and no email gate on any tool. This belongs in an editorial policy rather than only a legal one, because a site that harvests salary data has an incentive that shapes what it publishes, and we would rather not have that incentive. The privacy policy has the detail.

9. What this site will never be

It will not gate a calculator behind an email address. It will not publish near-identical pages for every city in Illinois to catch search traffic — Illinois has no local income tax, so a Naperville paycheck and a Peoria paycheck are the same paycheck, and pretending otherwise would be a lie told for rankings. It will not present an estimate as a filing. And it will not tell you what to do with your money, because that requires knowing things about you that a web page cannot know.