How PlainSalary Works
PlainSalary, turns official U.S. tax data into clear federal and state income tax answers. This page explains, in plain terms, where the numbers come from and how they reach your screen.
Where the data comes from
Our figures are drawn from primary U.S. sources:
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS) - federal income tax brackets and standard deductions, from Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (the 2026 annual inflation adjustments).
- Social Security Administration (SSA) - the Social Security (OASDI) wage base and payroll tax parameters, from the annual COLA fact sheet.
- Tax Foundation and state Departments of Revenue - individual income tax rates and brackets for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The pipeline
We ingest each source into a versioned database, normalize it into a consistent schema (federal brackets, standard deductions, FICA parameters, and per-state rate tables), and record the source vintage in our metadata. Pages then render those values live from the database on every request - no tax figure is hand-typed into a page. When a source publishes an update and we re-ingest it, the pages reflect the new numbers without a code change.
Editorial process
The explanatory copy, guides, research summaries, and the text around each table, is drafted by the PlainSalary. Drafts cite the underlying source, and every number that appears in prose is checked against the live database before publishing, so the words and the data always agree. We do not invent figures, and we do not round in a way that changes the meaning.
What we don't do
No fabricated author personas, no fake credentials, and no claims of human review we don't actually perform. The publisher is PlainSalary; the underlying tax law and rates belong to the IRS, the SSA, and the states; the explanatory copy is written and accuracy-checked by our editorial process. That is the full chain of responsibility, disclosed plainly. PlainSalary provides general information, not personalized tax advice, for your specific situation, consult a qualified tax professional.
Corrections and removal
Found a figure that doesn't match its source? See our corrections page or email hello@plainsalary.com. We aim to respond within 48 hours and publish fixes through the same versioned data pipeline, so the update history is preserved.