What changed, and when

Every figure on this site has a vintage. This page records what vintage is live, when it went live, and what changed when it did. Corrections are logged here too, and they stay logged.

What's running right now

Everything re-runs each January. That's not a maintenance preference, it's forced by the data: federal bracket widths are inflation-indexed and change every year, and states pass rate cuts during the session and backdate them to January 1.

Log

August 6, 2026

Published this page along with the methodology, data sources and about pages, and added a footer linking all four from every page on the site. No data changed. The calculation was already documented in the code; this is the same documentation written out where a reader can check it.

Also published the hourly wage set, covering the same metros as the salary set. It runs through the same tax engine, so an hourly page and a salary page describing the same annual income can't disagree.

August 1, 2026: correction, price index values

The price index values on the cost of living calculator had been generated rather than loaded from BEA, and they were labelled as BEA data. Checked against BEA's published bulk file, they were off by a mean of 2.6 index points and by as much as 15.0. The worst cases were San Jose, published at 125.4 against a real value of 110.4; New York at 122.5 against 112.6; San Francisco at 124.8 against 115.6; and Washington DC at 117.2 against 109.9.

The calculator was producing wrong answers on the largest metros for as long as those values were live. All metros and states were reloaded verbatim from BEA's file, keyed on GeoFIPS rather than metro name, and the values are now generated from the source file rather than maintained by hand.

Mid-2026: five states cut rates retroactively

Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia all reduced income tax rates during the 2026 session, each retroactive to January 1. The state tables were updated to the post-cut rates. Reference tables published in February still carried the pre-cut figures for those five states, which is the reason state schedules get checked more than once a year.

February 19, 2026: BEA 2024 price vintage

BEA released the 2024 Regional Price Parities. The entire series from 2008 forward was re-pulled rather than extended, because BEA restates its whole history with each release and a value carried over from an older vintage would not be comparable with the new ones. Every price figure and every trend chart on the site moved to this vintage at the same time.

Tax year 2026 tables

Federal brackets and the standard deduction moved to the 2026 figures from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32. FICA rates, the Social Security wage base and the additional Medicare thresholds moved to their 2026 values. State schedules were rebuilt for 2026 across 48 of 51 jurisdictions.

October 1, 2025: HUD FY2026 rents

Fair Market Rents for fiscal year 2026 took effect and replaced the previous year's figures. Metros that HUD splits into sub-areas were re-mapped, and each page prints HUD's own area name.

Currently held back

ID, ND, VT carry 2025 tax figures rather than 2026 ones, so every page in those states is gated and returns a 404. Vermont's revenue department blocks automated requests. Idaho and North Dakota publish their bracket widths late in the year.

These will publish when the 2026 figures are confirmed against a primary source, and that confirmation will be dated here.