Changelog

What has to be in an entry?

Five things, and an entry missing any of them is not finished. The date. The rule file and version string that changed. The primary source it was changed against, named specifically enough to re-read — a form line or a code subsection, not a homepage. What the change does to a computed deduction, in the direction it moves it. And confirmation that the test suite was re-run, with a regression test added where a value moved.

The fourth is the one that matters to a household. “Corrected the phase-out rounding” says nothing useful; “the step is now rounded down, which raises the tips and overtime deductions by up to $100 each for anyone above the threshold” tells you whether your own figure moved and which way.

What triggers an entry?

Any edit to a rule file. That includes the obvious cases — a cap, threshold, rate or eligibility date — and three quieter ones that count just as much: a rounding convention applied in the wrong direction, a citation URL or label that turns out to be wrong, and an occupation code whose title does not match the official list. The last of those is not cosmetic. A code read off a W-2 that this site labels with the wrong occupation is a wrong answer, however tidy the arithmetic beneath it.

Rewriting how a deduction is explained does not get an entry. Changing what it computes always does, even when the visible effect is a few cents, because the point of the record is that no number moves silently.

How are the rule files versioned?

Six files back this section, one per rule set, each named rule-set-taxyear.revision:

• tips-2026.1 — the $25,000 cap, thresholds, and the floored $1,000 step.
• overtime-2026.1 — the split single and joint caps, and the share of the overtime hour that qualifies.
• senior-2026.1 — the per-person amount, the qualifying age, and the percentage-of-excess phase-out.
• car-loan-2026.1 — the cap, the vehicle conditions, and the step that deliberately rounds up.
• brackets-2026.1 — the four bracket tables and the standard deduction.
• occupations-2026.1 — all 71 Treasury Tipped Occupation Codes.

The tax year is in the filename because these rules are annual, not perpetual. Each file carries an effectiveFrom of 1 Jan 2026 and an effectiveTo of 31 Dec 2026, so a change for a later year creates a new file rather than editing this one — and the bundle identifier above is assembled from the files themselves, so it cannot claim a version the engine did not run. These files must not be cloned past tax year 2028, where the statutes sunset.

What is pending verification right now?

Every rule set still carries an unverified flag, which is why the banner above is on the page. The values themselves were checked against primary sources on 15 Aug 2026 — the enrolled public law, the 2026 inflation-adjustment revenue procedure, the tips final regulation, Schedule 1-A and its instructions, and the official occupation list — and the great majority held. Four things keep the gate shut.

• Placeholder citations. Several rule files still cite a newsroom index or a bare irs.gov address rather than the document that was actually read. A figure whose citation nobody can follow is not verified, whatever its value.
• Sub-dollar rounding is unresolved. No source states a cents convention for these four computations. The engine rounds half-up to the cent, which is defensible and unstated by the IRS, and can move a result by about a dollar.
• Rules described but not encoded. The pre-existing extra standard deduction for people 65 and over is not modelled and stacks with the $6,000 senior deduction; most of the car-loan eligibility conditions are documented but not enforced by the engine.
• The overtime rulemaking is unsettled. No Treasury regulation implementing the overtime section could be located, and because the Federal Register's search could not be browsed, its absence is not established. If a final regulation exists it may narrow qualified overtime further than the current guidance does.

What gets re-checked, and when?

Each year's IRS inflation-adjustment revenue procedure, to refresh the bracket table and to check whether a section for the tips deduction has appeared — none had as of the 2026 procedure, which is what establishes that the caps and thresholds are fixed statutory figures rather than indexed ones. Schedule 1-A and its instructions each filing season, since they are the computation of record and are where the rounding conventions live. And the tips final regulation and the occupation list, because a code or title that shifts changes what a user is told about their own W-2.

The standards behind all of this are on the editorial policy page, and every citation with its last-verified date is on Sources.