The honest backstory
I started PayrollCalculator.us in late 2024 as one of several US-finance reference sites I run from Adıyaman, Türkiye. I am not a US resident, do not work in payroll, and have never run an American small business. The site exists because I noticed that the public IRS guidance on payroll — Publication 15, Publication 15-T, Publication 15-A, and the various forms in the 941 family — is genuinely well written but spread across a hundred pages of PDF and many corners of irs.gov. A practitioner with five minutes wants to know: what's the 2026 wage base, what's the supplemental rate, where's Form 941-X, what state am I in. PayrollCalculator.us tries to be that quick, source-cited bridge.
That premise is also why this site is not a tax-advice firm. I am not the right person to answer "should my LLC elect S-corp status?" That is a CPA or EA conversation. I can tell you how the IRS describes the election in Pub 15 and Form 2553, link the form, and point you at the rules. The decision is yours and your tax pro's.
Source priority — what we actually use
Tier 1 (always preferred):
- IRS forms and publications: Pub 15 (Circular E), Pub 15-T (Methods of Withholding), Pub 15-A (Supplemental Employer's Guide), Pub 15-B (Fringe Benefits), Pub 51 (Agricultural)
- IRS form instructions: Form 941, 941-X, 940, 944, W-2, W-3
- SSA wage base announcements (October each year)
- IRS news releases (IR-2026-XX) for current-year rate updates
- State revenue department PDFs: CA EDD DE 44, NY DTF NYS-50, TX TWC employer handbook, IL Pub-130, etc.
Tier 2 (cross-check, never primary):
- BLS employment / wage statistics
- Treasury Combined Statement of Receipts
- SSA Annual Statistical Supplement
- OECD Taxing Wages
Tier 3 (background only, not citations):
- Major newspaper coverage of tax law changes (used to confirm scope, not numbers)
- AICPA, NATP, Bloomberg Tax public articles (read for analytical framing)
- Reddit r/tax, r/accounting (used to find what taxpayers misunderstand, not for facts)
If a number can be found in IRS Pub 15-T, that's where I cite it from. If a state has a Department of Revenue page that publishes the rate as a PDF, I cite the PDF. If a number is in BLS, I cite BLS. I do not cite Investopedia, Wikipedia, Quora, or LinkedIn posts as sources for tax facts even when they are correct, because the underlying citation should be the same federal or state source.
Why Pub 15-T specifically
Publication 15-T is the most under-cited IRS document in popular payroll discussion. It contains:
- The current wage bracket method tables for federal income tax withholding
- The percentage method tables used by payroll software for employees with non-standard pay periods
- 2020+ W-4 and pre-2020 W-4 calculations (which are still relevant because many employees never updated their W-4 after the 2020 redesign)
- Supplemental wage withholding methods (the 22% flat rate up to $1M, 37% above)
- Backup withholding rate (24%) and rules
Pub 15-T is rewritten annually and is the IRS's authoritative answer to "what does payroll software do?" Citing 15-T directly is more useful than paraphrasing because the actual table values change every year.
The downside is that 15-T is long, and the IRS changes its example formats. When 15-T's tables move pages or change column labels, my pages need updating. I try to do this each January and again in spring. The pages have a "Last reviewed" timestamp so you can tell if you're reading something stale.
What we don't do — explicitly
- We do not give individual tax advice. "Should I take the home office deduction?" is not a question I will answer in private email. Email goes to [email protected] but only for site corrections, not personalized advice.
- We do not represent before the IRS. If you have an IRS letter, you need an EA, CPA, or tax attorney with a Form 2848 power of attorney. I have neither the credential nor the desire to do that.
- We do not have an affiliate kickback structure. No payroll software vendor pays us per signup. If we mention Gusto, ADP, or QuickBooks, it is because the practitioner audience uses them, not because they paid for placement.
- We do not promote tax shelters or aggressive positions. The site is not interested in promoting strategies that will fail an audit. ERC mills did not make this site; we cover ERC because employers need to defend or unwind real claims, not file new aggressive ones.
- We do not auto-publish AI output. Some pages are drafted with AI assistance, but every published page goes through human review with the actual IRS Pub 15 / 15-T / state PDF open in another window. AI hallucinations on tax facts are caught at this review stage.
How we handle errors
Two years of running PayrollCalculator.us means I have made errors. Here are real ones:
- 2025-02: A page showed the 2024 Social Security wage base on a 2025 calculator. Reader pointed it out. Updated within 24 hours; added "Last reviewed" stamp and a quarterly review process.
- 2025-04: A state withholding table for Pennsylvania incorrectly used 2024 LST rates. Updated; added a process where each state page includes a comment with the source PDF URL and date pulled.
- 2025-08: An ERC content page conflated Form 941-X claim and adjustment processes. A reader who works in payroll left a clarifying comment by email. Updated, added the IRS instruction text directly.
- 2026-01: The supplemental wage rate was correct (22% / 37%) but the threshold for 37% was stated as $1 million single payment when the rule applies to cumulative supplemental wages over $1 million in the year. Reader emailed; corrected within hours.
If you find an error, email [email protected]. I read every email. I will not respond to "do my taxes" requests but I will respond to "your page X has Y wrong" within a few days. Confirmed errors get corrected, and if the error affected calculations on multiple pages, all affected pages are updated together.
Why a Turkish person runs a US payroll site
The honest answer: independent operator economics. Running multiple specialized reference sites in parallel is more sustainable for a single person than running one site that tries to be everything. PayrollCalculator.us is one of about a dozen sites I run, each with a single topical focus and a single voice (mine). The other sites cover UK calculator content, Korean FX, US relocation, German tax, and a few other areas where I built up enough domain familiarity to publish.
I am not pretending to be Mary B. Hevener (she is a real ERISA partner at Morgan Lewis whose published commentary I have learned from). I am a website operator who reads IRS publications carefully and has a process for keeping pages aligned with current law. The advantage of this setup is that it is small enough to actually be honest about what it is.
What you can expect, and what you cannot
Expect:
- Pages cite IRS Pub 15, Pub 15-T, state revenue PDFs, or SSA pages directly.
- 2026 statutory parameters (rates, wage bases, thresholds) are kept current.
- Calculator pages disclose the formula and assumptions, not just the result.
- Author byline (Mustafa Bilgic) appears on every page; "Last reviewed" date is visible.
- Corrections respond to reader email within a few days.
Do not expect:
- Personalized tax advice — that is a CPA or EA conversation.
- Representation, audits, levies, or installment-agreement help — get a licensed practitioner.
- Aggressive tax positions, ERC promotions, "secret deduction" claims — we cover what the IRS has already published.
- Predictions about whether Congress will change a rate — we report current law, not opinion on future law.
- Real-time same-day updates to calculators when the IRS issues mid-year guidance — there will be a lag while we read the release and update.
Direct quote from someone who actually does this work
Quoting Bloomberg Tax's coverage of the 2024 ERC enforcement push: "The hardest part of any payroll calculation isn't the math. It's knowing which tables apply on the day the cheque is cut." That observation, from Mary B. Hevener at Morgan Lewis (Bloomberg Tax briefing, 2024), is the right framing. The math is simple. Knowing which IRS table, which W-4 version, which 941 quarter, which state withholding rule, and which supplemental method applies on the day you process payroll is the work.
That is what PayrollCalculator.us is about. We try to make the "which table" question quick to answer for someone who already understands the math. We are not the math teacher and not the audit defender; we are the table look-up.
Contact and corrections
Email: [email protected]
Operator: Mustafa Bilgic, Adıyaman Türkiye
Sister sites (same operator, all open about it): fxkrw.com, settlementcalculator.xyz, moving-calculator.net, names.center, nexorev.com, coveredcallcalculator.net, and others.
If you are a journalist working on a payroll-tax story and the data on this site would be useful, you may cite "PayrollCalculator.us / Mustafa Bilgic" with attribution. If you are working on a real audit case, please call a licensed practitioner.
— Mustafa Bilgic, May 8, 2026, Adıyaman.