CalcBloc publishes calculators and guides about US paychecks and taxes. People use them to make real decisions, so we hold our content to a simple standard: every figure must be traceable to an official source, and every explanation must match how the rules actually work.
Primary sources
We write from primary sources: IRS publications, forms, instructions and revenue procedures; Social Security Administration and Department of Labor materials; and the withholding guides, tax tables and statutes published by state and local governments. When we describe a rule, we link to the document that sets it.
We do not use other calculator websites, payroll company blogs, encyclopedias or news articles as sources for figures or rules. We may read them to find a primary document, but we cite the document itself.
When a source is ambiguous, we say so on the page and explain the interpretation we used, and we record it in the notes stored with the data.
How we write
- Plain English. We explain rules in everyday language and keep official terms where you will meet them on a form or pay stub.
- No hand-typed figures. Tax figures in our articles are not typed into the text. They are inserted from our data files, or calculated live by the same engine that powers the calculators. When a figure changes, every page that uses it changes with it.
- Figures outside the tax engine, such as a state's sales tax rate, are stored in a separate file with their source, retrieval date and notes, and shown with a link to that source.
- No invented examples presented as real. Worked examples use round, illustrative salaries and are labeled as examples. We do not publish made-up quotes, testimonials, surveys or statistics.
- Clear about limits. Each calculator explains what it assumes and what it does not model.
Review and accuracy checks
Before a page is published or updated:
- figures are checked against the source documents and the data files' validation rules;
- the formulas behind every calculator are tested against official worked examples and hand-calculated cases, and a failing test blocks publication;
- jurisdictions whose data we have not finished verifying are marked "data under review" rather than presented as final.
Our pages are not reviewed by a CPA, enrolled agent or attorney. Where an author has a professional credential, it will be shown on their byline and can be checked; until then, our content is credited to the CalcBloc Editorial Team. The full checking process is on our methodology page.
Use of AI tools
We use AI tools in our work, and we want to be clear about how. Article drafts and explanatory text are written with the help of AI tools. The tax figures are not: they come from official documents that we retrieve, store with their sources and validate automatically, and the text inserts them from those files rather than repeating them from a draft. Drafts are then checked against the cited sources and against the calculators' tested results before publication.
AI tools can make mistakes. That is why our figures are tied to sources and tests rather than to the wording of an article, and why we make it easy to report problems.
Corrections
If you think something on CalcBloc is wrong, please contact us with the page address and, if possible, a link to the official source.
- We check every report against the source document.
- If a figure or rule is wrong, we correct the data or text, add or update a test where it applies, and update the page's "last updated" or "last verified" date.
- For a substantive error, meaning one that could have changed someone's result or understanding, we add a short correction note to the affected page that says what changed and the date it was corrected.
- Minor fixes such as typos or wording changes are made without a note.
Updates
Tax rules change every year. Each calculator and state page shows when its data was last verified, and each article shows when it was last updated. When the IRS and the states publish the next year's figures, we update the data and the articles that depend on it.
Independence
CalcBloc is independent. No government agency, tax software company or employer pays us or reviews our content.
The site is free to use. We may show advertising in the future to cover costs. Advertisers will have no say over our data, calculations or articles, and ads will always be visually distinct from our content. We do not accept payment for coverage or placement. We do not currently use affiliate links; if that changes, they will be clearly labeled.