Publishing responsibility
FreelanceMath publishes under the organizational name FreelanceMath. The FreelanceMath project editors are responsible for calculator constants, formulas, explanatory copy, citations, update dates, stated assumptions, and corrections. Government agencies publish the underlying rules, but they do not write, review, or endorse this site.
Pages do not carry personal bylines, qualifications, or professional-review labels. FreelanceMath does not imply that a CPA, Enrolled Agent, attorney, or government official reviewed a page unless a real review has occurred and can be identified accurately. More information about the project and its audience is available on the About page.
What must be clear before publication
Each page must identify the tax question it addresses, the tax year used, the inputs a reader supplies, and the output the calculation produces. Rules taken from an official publication must be separated from planning assumptions and deliberate simplifications. Material exclusions are stated where a complete federal or state tax return could produce a different result.
Calculator pages must explain their method in plain language. Guides must add context rather than repeat the calculator interface. Citations must help a reader inspect the governing source, and links must lead to the referenced material instead of a general homepage when a more specific official page is available. Content is framed as an educational estimate for planning, never as individualized tax, legal, or financial advice.
Clarity, examples, and scope
Headlines, labels, tables, and examples should make the page's scope clear without promising an exact tax outcome. Worked examples identify their assumptions and use figures that can be followed through the stated formula. Results should not be described as savings, liability, or take-home pay without explaining which taxes, deductions, benefits, or costs the calculation includes.
Important caveats belong near the claim or output they qualify, not only in a footer. A general disclaimer does not replace a specific limitation, such as an omitted credit, a simplified state-tax base, or a filing-status assumption. Editorial revisions must preserve those distinctions when copy is shortened, moved, or reused on another page. Tax-year labels and visible update dates are changed only after the related figures have actually been reviewed.
Source hierarchy
Federal tax figures and filing rules are checked against current IRS forms, instructions, and publications, published Revenue Procedures, and relevant IRS topic pages. Social Security wage bases and related figures are checked against the Social Security Administration contribution and benefit base tables. State-specific rates and rules must come from the applicable state revenue or tax agency.
Secondary material can help locate a question or explain how readers encounter it, but a tax-preparation company, financial publisher, search result, or aggregator is not the sole authority for a number used in a calculator or guide. If a material figure cannot be traced to an appropriate primary source, it is withheld until the source question is resolved.
Source and calculation verification
Before publication, the project editors check that a source is live, applies to the stated tax year, and supports the sentence or constant attached to it. Rates, thresholds, filing-status rules, deadlines, and form references are compared with related calculators, guides, FAQs, methodology notes, and structured data. A figure should not appear differently on two pages without a documented reason.
When a page describes calculator logic, the prose is reconciled with the production code and available automated tests or worked examples. Inputs and intermediate steps are checked, rounding is accounted for, and the final displayed result is compared with the example in the copy. A conflict between code, prose, and a controlling source blocks publication until it is resolved. The Methodology documents the shared calculation framework and known limitations in more detail.
Review and update cadence
The annual tax-year review takes place during October and November as the IRS releases inflation-adjusted figures and the SSA announces the next Social Security wage base. Constants are checked across calculators, guides, examples, methodology pages, and metadata before a new tax year is presented as current.
Material mid-year guidance that affects a live calculation is reviewed within one week of publication. Confirmed errors are handled as soon as practicable. A material change updates the visible date on the affected page, and related surfaces are checked so an old figure is not left behind. The Corrections Policy explains how readers can flag a problem and what happens next.
Editorial independence
Advertising does not determine calculator formulas, source selection, limitations, conclusions, rankings, or output. A sponsor cannot pay to change a tax result, remove an inconvenient caveat, or replace an official source with a commercial claim. Editorial content must remain usable without clicking an advertisement, buying a product, or providing contact details.
If affiliate relationships are introduced, qualifying links will be labelled and kept separate from the calculation and verification process. Links to government agencies appear because those agencies publish the controlling material, not because they endorse FreelanceMath. The site-wide Disclaimer explains the limits of the educational estimates published here.