Editorial policy

We use primary documents only: statutes on legislature websites, regulations, labor-department notices and posters, revenue-department instructions and notices, and IRS publications. Summaries by payroll companies, law firms, news outlets and other calculators are used only as leads to find the primary document; if we cannot retrieve the primary document, the figure does not go on the site. Arizona’s 2027 minimum wage is an example: the notice exists, but its server refused our requests, so the calculator asks you for that figure from January 1, 2027 rather than repeating a number we have not read.

Where states genuinely agree, we say so once instead of padding pages: the federal explanation of the deduction lives on one page, and state pages link to it.

• Every January 1 and July 1: minimum wages for indexed states (most states reset January 1; Alaska from 2028, DC and Oregon July 1; Florida September 30).
• October–November each year: the IRS inflation tables for the next tax year, which the tax-saving estimate needs.
• After each legislative session: state overtime tax treatment — several states changed course in 2026 alone.
• When the IRS updates its overtime FAQs: the deduction rules (the current version is FS-2026-13, August 2026).

Each page shows the date its rules were last verified, and the sitemap’s last-modified date is that same date — we never bump it just because the site was rebuilt.

Every page links to a corrections form. Reports are stored with the page they concern, checked against the primary source, and fixed in the data — after which the engine, the calculator, the worked examples and the tests all update together. If a report shows that a figure was wrong, the page’s verified date changes and the change is recorded in the site’s version history. We do not quietly edit a number without re-verifying the rest of that rule.

The Overtime Calc by State Editorial Team uses software, including AI tools, to help draft text, write code, fetch documents and check pages. Automated tests compare the engine with hand-worked examples taken from the regulations — the Department of Labor’s $12-plus-$46-bonus example must produce exactly $637 — and fail the build if any rule window lapses without a successor. Automation does not decide what the law says: every rule on the site is tied to a document that was retrieved and read, and that document is cited where the rule is used.