Editorial policy

Sourcing

Every figure on RuleCost — a contribution cap, an income threshold, a compensation amount — traces back to a primary source: the text of a law, a federal register notice, an IRS Revenue Procedure, a CMS bulletin, or the equivalent official publication in another jurisdiction. We don’t build a calculator from a news article’s summary of a rule; we build it from the rule.

Each tool page lists its sources, with the publisher and the date we last checked them, in the “Sources” section.

Review

Before a calculator is published, someone other than the person who built it checks the logic against worked examples from the source material itself — not just against the code’s own tests. The reviewer’s name appears on the tool page (“Reviewed by …”).

Keeping things current

Tax brackets, poverty guidelines, and compensation thresholds change on a predictable annual schedule; a few rules (like the current no-tax-on-overtime provision) have a hard expiration date written into the law. We keep an internal calendar of when each figure is due for a refresh, and a page’s “Updated” date always reflects the last time its numbers were actually checked — not just the last time the page was edited.

Corrections

If a figure is wrong, we want to know. Contact us with the tool name and what looks off. Confirmed errors are corrected as soon as we can verify the fix against the source, and the page’s “Updated” date changes accordingly.

Advertising

RuleCost carries display advertising (Google AdSense) to stay free to use. Advertising has no role in choosing which rules we cover, what a calculator’s methodology is, or what a result says. Ad placements are visually separated from calculator results and are never styled to look like part of the tool itself.