Site information
Estate Tax Editorial Policy
Updated Editorial policy
Authority before arithmetic
A death-tax page starts with the jurisdiction, date of death and legal mechanism. Our preferred sources are enacted statutes, regulations, current agency return instructions and official computation worksheets. We compare a general agency overview with the actual return and governing law. An old form can remain accessible after a legislative change, so a government domain alone does not establish that its number is current. A proposed bill is not used as though it were enacted.
Verification and future years
The visible updated date is the day the page's wording or figures last changed, or the day its rule was last read again against the source. Republishing an unchanged page does not move it. When a legislature or revenue department changes a rule, the affected page is re-read against the new text, and a reader's report of a change is checked the same way. Estate taxes indexed for inflation require an actual published death-year parameter. Where the next amount has not been published, the worksheet explains its statutory structure and asks for that exact agency amount. It does not relabel a prior exclusion, estimate an inflation factor or present an invented sample amount as an official announcement.
Checking an example
For a numeric example, we write down the prepared estate base, deductions, gifts, property fraction and credits that control the answer. Separate hand arithmetic, or the agency's own computation worksheet, fixes the expected answer first; the same amounts are then typed into the page's form and the two must match at the precision the return uses. Estates sitting exactly on an exclusion, amounts just above and below it, deaths on either side of a law's effective date and incomplete entries get extra attention. A blank is distinct from zero. Special elections outside the reviewed scope remain outside it even if a confirmation box is checked.
Automation disclosure
We use AI-assisted tools to draft text, write the worksheet arithmetic and flag repeated passages. These tools can make mistakes. Their output is not a legal authority, and a page that loads without error is not evidence that a tax rate is correct. The cited statute, the hand-worked example and the form's own answer are separate checks on each other. We do not publish fictitious reviewer biographies, professional certifications, endorsements or star ratings to suggest that an automated review is a professional engagement.
Correction workflow
A report should identify the affected page, the disputed figure or rule, the relevant death year and a public primary source if available. We compare the report with the cited authority, reproduce a calculation defect and revise the page when supported. A substantive fix moves the page date and adds the reported case to the examples the worksheet must keep answering correctly. The contact form stores only the submitted report and optional reply address; do not include personal estate records. There is no guaranteed response time or promise of individualized advice.
Primary source index · Calculation methodology · Editorial policy · Report a correction
First documented · Updated