Deorbit Plan

Editorial policy

How content is sourced, reviewed and corrected · By the Deorbit Plan editorial team, a Berrydyne program

Who is responsible

Deorbit Plan is run by Berrydyne, and its pages are written by the Deorbit Plan editorial team, a Berrydyne program. We don’t sign pages with individual names. We are not licensed financial advisors, and nothing here is personal advice (see the disclaimer). So don’t take our word for it: every figure links to the official source it came from.

Primary sources only

We accept a fact, rule or number only after confirming it with a primary source: the IRS (revenue procedures, notices, publications, forms), the Social Security Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, HHS (poverty guidelines), a state revenue department, or the statute or regulation itself. Trade press and tax-software companies can tell us that something changed, but we never use them as proof. Every changed value is confirmed at the primary source before it goes live.

Opinions, forecasts and our own earlier pages don’t count as sources. When an article reports a research finding, it cites the study and says what the study does and does not show.

One-way data flow

The simulator and the articles use the same checked figures, and information moves in one direction only:

  1. Primary sources (IRS, SSA, CMS, HHS, state revenue departments, statute)
  2. Sourced constants. Each law-derived number in the model is stored with its value, a link to the primary source it came from, and a flag that says whether that source has been checked. The sources and verification page lists every one of them, with its source and whether it has been checked.
  3. The simulation engine takes its tax-law figures from those constants and nowhere else.
  4. Articles and tools are written from the same constants and the same primary sources.

Nothing moves back up that list. Our articles are written from the sources, so an article is never used as evidence for anything: not for another article, not for a constant, and not when we research a question. If an article and a primary source disagree, the article is wrong and we fix it. This keeps the site from citing itself and repeating its own mistakes.

Citations and “last reviewed” dates

  • Claims in articles carry numbered citations that link to the References list at the end of the article. Those references point to primary sources.
  • Every article shows a Last reviewed date: the last time it was checked or changed. The home page shows when the modeled rules were last checked as a whole (November 11, 2026).
  • Year-specific pages (such as the “by the numbers” tables) are rebuilt from the constants each year. We don’t hand-edit last year’s text.

The periodic tax-law review

Tax and benefit rules change, so we re-check the modeled rules against official releases in a written review that follows the same steps every time. The first two reports are dated September and November 2026 (see the update log). Each review works through a checklist that covers:

  • federal brackets, standard and additional deductions, and capital-gains thresholds, for every filing status the model supports;
  • retirement-account, HSA and gift limits, and the estate exemption;
  • Social Security taxation thresholds, benefit formulas and survivor rules;
  • Medicare Part B and Part D premiums and IRMAA tiers;
  • ACA poverty guidelines, the applicable-percentage table and subsidy-cliff status;
  • required minimum distribution ages and tables, the QCD limit and inherited-account rules;
  • net investment income tax and other statutory thresholds;
  • state income tax for every modeled state: rates, deductions, retirement-income and Social Security treatment;
  • the historical market dataset behind the bootstrap model;
  • assumptions in the model’s design that new legislation could have invalidated;
  • each calculator and article that encodes a law-dependent rule, so the checklist grows whenever a feature adds one.

Each review also includes a link audit. We fetch every outbound reference in the Learn library and every source link behind a modeled constant. A link fails if it is dead, redirects somewhere unrelated, or still loads but no longer contains the figure it was cited for. We replace failed links with checked primary sources.

Each review ends with a written report (what changed, what is pending, and which sources were confirmed directly and which were not) and a proposed update plan. Nothing in the model changes until the plan has been approved by a person. Then we make the changes, mark the affected constants as verified with their new sources, and re-read and update the articles that quote them.

Corrections

If you think a figure, a statement or a source link is wrong, use the feedback form or write to help@deorbitplan.com. We check the correction against the primary source, fix it in the model and on every page that depends on it, and update the page’s “Last reviewed” date. Material changes to articles, tools, state pages and modeled rules are listed, with dates, in the public update log.

Checks before anything is published

We publish a number only when it traces to a primary source. Every change to the model or the content has to pass our automated checks (type checking, the full test suite and a clean build) before it is accepted. The tax-law review stops after its report and plan until a person approves them. Mistakes can still get through, which is a big part of why we cite every source and ask you to report errors.

Independence

Content is not written to favour an advertiser, product or provider. Advertisers and partners have no say in which topics we cover, which figures we use or what an article concludes, and we do not accept payment for content. The advertising and referrals page says how the site is funded and what it loads today. The privacy policy explains how the simulator handles your data.