Editorial standards

Who writes our guides

Guides and calculators are published by the Work & Money Editorial Team, the independent team that builds and maintains this site. We aren't a bank, lender, broker or tax-preparation firm, and no company pays to be included in our tools or guides. We are not CPAs or financial advisers, so our pages explain how rules and numbers work rather than telling you what to do with your money.

How every page is checked before it's published

1. Research brief from primary sources. Each topic starts with a list of facts, each tied to an official source (IRS, SSA, BLS, DOL, Census, BEA, Federal Reserve, state agencies), the period it covers and the date we checked it. Anything we can't confirm at a primary source is left out or labelled.
2. Numbers come from tested code. Calculator worked examples are produced by the same calculation code as the calculator on the page, so the article and the tool can't disagree. Reference tables (such as tax brackets) are copied from the official source and checked by tests.
3. Independent fact-check. A separate review pass, run apart from the drafting, re-checks claims against the cited sources (spot-checking the highest-risk ones at the official site) and recomputes the figures. We fix or remove anything it can't confirm.
4. Automated tests. Hundreds of unit and browser tests run on every release, including worked examples from official publications.
5. Dated and versioned. Each page shows when it was last reviewed, and each calculator shows its calculation version.

How we use AI tools

We use AI tools to help research sources, draft explanations and run fact-check passes. They don't replace sourcing: every figure must trace to a primary source or to our tested calculation code, and a page isn't published until its numbers and claims pass the checks above.

Research

Each guide starts from a real decision people face and the tool that helps with it. We review the pages that currently appear in search results to find what they leave out, then go to primary sources — the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis — before secondary ones.

Sourcing

• Every statistic names its source, the period it describes and when we accessed it.
• Third-party survey figures are labelled as estimates.
• Worked examples are produced by our own calculators, so the article and the tool always agree.
• We don't publish invented statistics, ratings, testimonials or reviews.

Updates

Tax rules are refreshed when the IRS and SSA publish the next year's figures (usually October–December). Wage data is refreshed when BLS publishes a new OEWS release (annually, usually in spring). Price-level data is refreshed with BEA's annual release. Each page shows when it was last reviewed and what period its data covers.

Corrections

Report errors through the contact page. We correct confirmed errors and note material changes on the page.