Editorial & Review Policy
How 1099s Made Easy checks tax-year figures, keeps evergreen guidance current, discloses what it earns from, and separates education from personal advice.
Last updated September 19, 2026
Our standard
1099s Made Easy publishes plain-English educational material for people who work for themselves. Each article is written to answer a specific question, explain the rule in context, show the arithmetic where numbers matter, and make clear when an individual situation belongs with a qualified tax professional.
Articles also say plainly who they are not for. An opening line that sends a salaried reader away costs traffic and is kept anyway, because the alternative is a reader acting on a rule that was never about them.
Everything here is written by Sam Mackel, who writes the 1099s Made Easy series. More about the author.
Sources and verification
Tax thresholds, rates, filing dates, form instructions, and calculation rules are checked against primary official sources. These normally include IRS forms and instructions, IRS publications, revenue procedures, notices, and official topic pages. Other federal sources are used when the subject requires them.
Official sources are listed on articles and calculator pages so readers can verify the underlying rule. Secondary summaries may help identify a question, but they are not treated as authority for a tax figure.
Where two official pages disagree — an older overview that has not been revised against a form's current instructions, for example — the page says so, names both, and explains which one applies to which year. Quietly picking one and printing it as settled is the failure this rule exists to prevent.
Tax-year review without a visible publication date
Articles are maintained as evergreen guides. Instead of displaying a day-level publication date, each article's byline shows Reviewed for Tax Year 2026 — the figures on it are the ones you use for the return filed in Filing Season 2027.
That label is recorded on each article individually, not applied across the site from one setting. An article states the tax year its own figures and sources were last checked for, and an automated check refuses to build the site while any article's recorded year is behind the current one. The label cannot be moved forward without the review that justifies it.
Technical publication and modification dates remain in page metadata, structured data, the sitemap, and the RSS feed for search engines and content systems. They are not displayed as the article's visible byline.
Updates and corrections
When official guidance changes, the affected explanation, worked example, calculator constant, source list, and tax-year label are reviewed together. A changed number is not updated in isolation if it changes the conclusion around it.
The site uses automated checks for internal broken links, outbound official source links, missing sources and images, structured data, mobile layout, reading-time accuracy, per-article review years, and calculator results. Automation supports the review process; it does not turn general information into advice for a particular taxpayer.
Found an error? A public address for corrections is not open yet. Rather than print a channel that nobody reads, this page says so — and until one is published, the source links on every article are there precisely so a reader can check a figure without having to ask.
How this site is funded
The articles, calculators and form pages here are free, carry no advertising, and set no tracking cookies. The site exists to introduce readers to the 1099s Made Easy books, which Sam Mackel writes and sells. That is a direct commercial interest, and it is stated here rather than left to be worked out.
What it does not change: which figure appears on a page, which official source that figure is checked against, or whether an article tells a reader plainly that the subject is not theirs. A book is recommended where it goes further on the question at hand, and every article is written to stand on its own without one.
Limits of the material
This website and the 1099s Made Easy books provide general educational information. They do not provide tax, legal, accounting, or financial advice, and they do not create a professional-client relationship. Unless a credentialed reviewer is specifically named on a page, the material should not be understood as a CPA or enrolled-agent review.
Coverage is United States federal tax only. State and local rules are not covered, because no state's rules have been verified to the standard above — and publishing them at a lower standard would undo the point of having one.