Editorial Policy — Paycheck-Calculators.org — E-E-A-T, State Coverage, Annual Rate Updates

1. Editorial Mission

Most online paycheck calculators run on stale tax tables, treat every state the same, or quietly ship your salary numbers to a server. We are different: every calculator runs in your browser, shows its working, treats each state as its own piece of work, and uses the current published rates from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor, and your state’s department of revenue. The result is a fast, mobile-first paycheck estimate you can trust the math of.

2. Our E-E-A-T Commitment

3. Source Hierarchy

We work to a six-tier source hierarchy, where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict:

• Tier 1 — The Internal Revenue Service: federal income-tax brackets, the standard deduction, Form W-4, and withholding methods (Publication 15-T).
• Tier 2 — The Social Security Administration: the annual Social Security wage base, the cost-of-living adjustment, and FICA-related thresholds.
• Tier 3 — The U.S. Department of Labor (Wage and Hour Division): FLSA overtime, the salary threshold for the exemption, and minimum-wage standards (29 CFR Part 778).
• Tier 4 — State departments of revenue / taxation: each state’s official published brackets, flat rates, and withholding tables.
• Tier 5 — The Bureau of Labor Statistics: wage and salary statistics, the CPI used for cost-of-living comparisons.
• Tier 6 — Federal Trade Commission & Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: consumer-protection context for paycheck and debt-related calculators.

Full detail on each tier is on our Sources & Methodology page.

4. The Annual Rate-Update Workflow

Most tax tables refresh once a year, but the cadence is staggered — the SSA publishes the new wage base in autumn, the IRS issues the annual Revenue Procedure for next year’s brackets, and states publish on their own schedules. Our workflow:

1. Track every primary source. Editor watchlist of IRS, SSA, DOL, BLS, and 50 state departments of revenue for new releases.
2. Capture the official rate update. When a new SSA wage base, IRS Rev. Proc., DOL salary threshold, or state schedule drops, we capture it directly from the official .gov source.
3. Update the calculator’s rate constants. A developer revises only the rate constants, never the underlying formula in the same commit.
4. Re-run the formula audit. See Section 6.
5. Update the “Rates current as of” date on the calculator.
6. Editor sign-off against the official source before deployment.
7. Reader-reported rate fixes are a 48-hour priority queue.

5. State-Coverage Discipline

6. Formula Audit

7. Browser-Compute Privacy Standard

8. Independence

paycheck-calculators.org/ is independent. We are not affiliated with the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor, the BLS, any state department of revenue, any payroll provider, or any employer. No agency reviews our content prior to publication. No payment is accepted for editorial coverage or favorable placement of any third-party service.

9. Advertising Relationships

We are funded by display advertising. Our editorial content and calculator formulas are never altered to favor any advertiser. We decline advertising in these categories:

• Operations that misrepresent themselves as the IRS, the SSA, or any state tax authority
• Tax-relief, debt-relief, or payday-loan services that fail FTC Act Section 5 standards
• Products that promise specific tax-refund or salary-negotiation outcomes
• Products with environmental/sustainability claims that fail the FTC Green Guides

10. FTC Act Section 5 and State UDAP Compliance

Our own promotional content is written to comply with Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. §45), which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices, and with state UDAP statutes. Spot something deceptive? Report it to us and to reportfraud.ftc.gov. For consumer-finance complaints, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is at consumerfinance.gov.

11. Corrections

If a paycheck calculator uses an outdated rate, a formula that does not match the official source, or returns a result you cannot reproduce from the agency’s own tables, we want to know and fix it. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue: 7 business days for most, with a 48-hour priority path for confirmed rate or formula errors.

12. AI and Automation

We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance for explanatory copy. However, no tax rate, formula, withholding method, FICA threshold, FLSA rule, or state bracket on paycheck-calculators.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the official agency source. We do not auto-generate calculator logic and we do not deploy a rate update without an editor confirming the official .gov publication. This human-in-the-loop standard is central to our E-E-A-T commitment.

13. Contact

For corrections, editorial questions, or sourcing inquiries: info@paycheck-calculators.org