Editorial & Corrections Policy
In plain terms: PlainSalary presents official US tax figures and estimates take-home pay from them. It is an information resource, not tax advice, verify your own situation with the IRS, your state Department of Revenue, or a licensed tax professional before filing.
PlainSalary publishes the 2026 US federal income tax brackets, FICA rates, and each state's individual income tax schedule, plus a calculator that estimates take-home pay. This page explains where every figure comes from, how it is checked, and how to flag one that looks wrong.
Our sources
Every number on the site traces to a primary, public source:
- IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 - the 2026 federal income tax brackets and standard deductions.
- SSA 2026 COLA Fact Sheet - the Social Security wage base and Medicare rates.
- Tax Foundation, 2026 State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets - per-state structure and rates, cross-checked against each state's Department of Revenue.
How the data is produced
Source figures are transcribed into a versioned database and rendered live on every page, no figure is hand-typed into prose. Take-home estimates are computed from the published brackets using a single, documented method (see any page's methodology): single filer, standard deduction, wage income only, no credits or local taxes. Editorial copy is written to explain the data and is checked for numeric accuracy against the database before publishing. We do not generate page text from an AI model and present it as analysis.
Update cadence
Federal brackets and the Social Security wage base are refreshed annually when the IRS and SSA publish the next year's figures (typically each October). State rate changes are applied as states enact them. The "last updated" date on each page reflects the data vintage, not the build time.
Corrections
If a figure does not match its published source, we want to fix it. Report it via our corrections page with the page and the value in question. Confirmed errors are corrected at the database source so the fix propagates everywhere the figure appears.