Terms

Short, because the site is simple: a calculator, some articles, and a dataset. Nothing here is sold, and nothing here is advice.

Estimates, not advice

Every figure is an estimate of your 2026 annual tax liability, computed from published IRS and state tables by our own engine. It is not tax advice, not legal advice, and not a substitute for a preparer or for your own return. It assumes the standard deduction, no dependants and no credits unless you enter them, and it models a single person’s wage income — the methodology page states the boundaries in detail, and every state page prints its own known limitations.

Take-home pay is not the same thing as withholding. Your paycheck is what your employer withholds under your W-4; this is what the year actually costs. The two differ on purpose, and the difference is the refund or the bill in April.

We check the engine against the IRS’s own tables on every build. That makes mistakes less likely, not impossible. If a figure here disagrees with your return, your return is the one that counts — and we would genuinely like to hear about it.

Nothing is for sale

There is no paid tier, no subscription and no advertising, so there is nothing to refund and no refund policy. If that ever changes, this page will say so before anything is charged.

Accounts

Optional. There is no password: you give an email address, we send a link, opening it signs you in. An account stores your email, the figures you press save on, and one session cookie — nothing else. You can delete the whole account, and everything in it, from your account page in one click. What that covers is set out on the privacy page.

Keep your sign-in links to yourself; anyone holding one can open your saved figures until it expires. We may close an account that is used to attack the site, and we will say why.

Acceptable use

Read it, use the calculator, quote the figures, embed the widget, and take the dataset. Do not try to break it, overload it, de-anonymise the data, or scrape it faster than a person could read it — there is a bulk file precisely so nobody has to.

What you may do with the figures

The computed take-home dataset — what the engine produces for a salary in a jurisdiction — is published under CC BY 4.0. Use it anywhere, including commercially, with attribution to Take-Home Almanac.

The observed usage dataset — what people actually check, in aggregate — is published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: free for research, journalism and personal use, and commercial use needs a licence. The two differ because they cost different things to make. The computed figures anyone with the tax code could reproduce; the observed ones exist only because people used this site, and giving them away for commercial use would be giving away the only thing here that is genuinely ours. Details, and what a licence covers, are on the data page.

The site’s text, design and code are ours and are not covered by either licence.

Privacy, and your rights over your data

The privacy page is the operative document and is written to be read rather than to be defensible. In short: your salary is never sent, your IP address is never stored, and the analytics carry no identifier that could be tied back to you.

Residents of California and of other states with similar laws have rights to know what is held about them, to obtain a copy, and to have it deleted. Because the analytics hold no identifier, there is no record in them to find or return — that is a property of how the data is collected, not a refusal. Where there IS a record of you, which is an account, the delete control on your account page removes it and everything attached to it immediately and permanently, without asking us. We do not sell or share personal information, and there is no advertising on this site to share it with.

Warranties and liability

The site is provided as it is, without warranty. We do not promise it will be available, correct, or fit for any particular purpose, and we are not liable for decisions taken on the strength of a figure here. Check anything that matters against your own return or a professional.

Changes

Material changes to these terms are recorded on the changelog like everything else that changes here. Continuing to use the site after a change means accepting it.

Contact

Get in touch — corrections to a tax figure are the most welcome kind of mail we get.