estimatetax
2026 · 6 published corrections

Corrections

Every mistake we have found in our own figures, published with the date, the cause and the test that now prevents it. A calculator that has never announced an error is either very new or not looking.

Written and edited by Pablo Ruiz QuinteroSources checked September 1, 2026Updated 2026-09-02

Published corrections

2026-09-01

The verification log was published in Spanish on English-language pages.

Affected
All 51 state pages — 37 log entries and 24 document titles.
Cause
Internal working notes and published text shared one field. The notes are written in Spanish; the pages are read by US taxpayers.
Fix
A separate published field was added, and every entry rewritten in English.
Test
A test asserts that no known Spanish phrase appears in published output, and an inverse test asserts the internal notes remain in Spanish.
2026-09-01

San Francisco showed San Diego County's property tax rate.

Affected
The San Francisco city page.
Cause
The county lookup split the city name on the first space and matched "San".
Fix
An explicit city-to-county map replaced the string matching.
Test
Each city page asserts its county by name rather than by derivation.
2026-09-01

New York City withholding rates were nearly published as statutory rates.

Affected
Caught before publication.
Cause
NYC withholding runs 2.05%–4.25% because it folds in a school tax credit; the statutory brackets are 3.078%–3.876%. A table derived from the withholding schedule looks like a rate schedule.
Fix
The statutory brackets were read off the source document — page 40 of a 41-page instruction booklet — rather than off a derived table.
Test
The NYC rates are asserted against the statutory figures directly.
2026-09-01

The AI explanation compared two different taxes and called the result surprising.

Affected
Any page where the explanation was generated.
Cause
An effective rate including payroll and state tax was set against a federal marginal income tax rate. Both numbers were correct; the comparison was meaningless.
Fix
The figures sent to the model now carry labels stating which are comparable, with an explicit prohibition on the comparison in the prompt.
2026-09-01

Portland was shown as having no local income tax.

Affected
The Portland city page.
Cause
The local resolver did not handle threshold-based levies. Portland does levy them; a salary below the threshold simply pays nothing.
Fix
The resolver now models the Metro and Multnomah thresholds, and the page distinguishes "does not levy" from "levies, but not at this income".
2026-09-02

The local coverage figure understated itself by an order of magnitude.

Affected
The income tax hub, which stated we did not cover local income tax at all.
Cause
The coverage function counted only the hand-loaded cities and ignored the six state modules added afterwards.
Fix
It now counts the underlying data, so loading another state moves the figure without anyone remembering to edit it.

Why publish this at all

Because from the outside, a site with no corrections page is indistinguishable from a site that has never checked. Both look clean, and only one of them is.

Publishing costs something — every entry below is a mistake with our name on it — and it buys the only thing worth having in this category, which is a reason to believe the figures we have not been wrong about yet.

Each entry names what went wrong, what it affected, what caused it and what now prevents it. Most have a test attached, because a correction without one is a promise rather than a change.

This is separate from the changelog, which records every update to the tax data whether or not anything was wrong. This page is only the errors.

Reporting something that looks wrong

If a figure on this site does not match what you can find in the source it cites, we want to know, and a report that turns out to be mistaken costs us nothing.

The most useful report names the page, the figure, and what you believe it should be — ideally with the document you are comparing against. That is usually enough to resolve it in one exchange rather than three.

Send it to hola@prqdigital.com.

What happens next: the figure is checked against its primary source, corrected if wrong, and the correction is published here with the date. Nothing is fixed silently.

Where to go next

Tax data changelogEvery update to the data, including the routine ones.SourcesEvery figure with its document and date.Editorial policyHow figures get here and who is responsible.Are tax estimators accurate?What we found auditing everyone else.

Questions

How do I report an error?
Email hola@prqdigital.com with the page, the figure and what you believe it should be.
Do you fix errors quietly?
No. Every correction is published here with the date, what it affected and what caused it. A number that changes without a record is indistinguishable from a number that was always wrong.
What is the difference between this and the changelog?
The changelog records every update to the tax data, including routine ones where nothing was wrong. This page records only the errors.
Have you had a serious error?
Yes — a verification log published in the wrong language across 51 state pages, and one county's property tax rate shown on another county's page. Both are below with what caused them and what now prevents them.