Data Sources & Citations

Last reviewed: May 17, 2026.

Every calculator and converter on FreeToolsToGo relies on publicly available formulas, government publications, or open standards. This page lists every external source we cite. All sources below are publicly accessible without a paywall or login. We do not use any subscription tax-research service, paid data provider, or proprietary aggregator.

For per-tool methodology detail, see the "How this calculation works" section on each tool page. The constants files in the codebase (src/lib/finance/constants/ and src/data/) include the same citations inline so future maintainers can verify each value against the source.

Federal income tax — IRS

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
Rev. Proc. 2024-40 (2025 tax-year inflation adjustments)IRS2025 tax yearFederal Income Tax, Capital Gains, SE Tax, Quarterly Estimated Tax, Paycheck
Publication 590-B Appendix B Table III — Uniform Lifetime TableIRS2024 editionRMD Calculator
Publication 936 — Home Mortgage Interest DeductionIRS2024 editionMortgage, Refinance, HELOC
Publication 17 — Your Federal Income TaxIRS2024 editionFederal Income Tax, Quarterly Estimated Tax
Publication 15-T — Federal Income Tax WithholdingIRS2025 editionPaycheck (W4 allowance value)
Notice 2024-80 — Retirement contribution limits 2025IRS2025 plan year401(k), Roth vs Traditional IRA, RMD
IRC § 1 (tax brackets)US Codeas amendedFederal Income Tax, Capital Gains, Paycheck
IRC § 86 (Social Security taxation)US Codeas amendedFederal Income Tax, Social Security Break-Even
IRC § 1401 / § 1402 (self-employment tax)US Codeas amendedSelf-Employment Tax, Quarterly Estimated Tax
IRC § 1411 (Net Investment Income Tax)US Codeas amendedCapital Gains, Federal Income Tax
IRC § 6654 (estimated tax underpayment penalty)US Codeas amendedQuarterly Estimated Tax
IRC § 3101 (FICA tax rates)US Codeas amendedPaycheck, Self-Employment Tax
IRC § 415(c) / § 402(g) / § 414(v) (contribution limits)US Codeas amended401(k)
Treas. Reg. § 1.401(a)(9)-9 (RMD divisors)TreasurycurrentRMD Calculator

Social Security — SSA

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
SSA 2025 Fact Sheet (wage base, COLA, max benefit)SSA2025Paycheck, Social Security Break-Even
SSA POMS RS 00615 — Early/Delayed RetirementSSAcurrentSocial Security Break-Even
SSDI eligibility / replacement-ratio dataSSAcurrentDisability Insurance

Mortgage / lending — CFPB

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
CFPB Bureau Bulletin 2011-01 (amortization formula)CFPB2011Mortgage, Refinance, HELOC, Loan Calculator, Auto Loan
Homeowners Protection Act of 1998 (PMI auto-drop trigger)US Code1998 (amended 2008)Mortgage
Regulation Z / Truth-in-Lending Act (payment crediting)CFPB / Federal ReservecurrentMortgage, Refinance, Loan Calculator

State sales tax — State DORs

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
Each state Department of Revenue publishes its current combined rate. We aggregate 50 state + DC rates with citations in src/data/us-states.tsState DORs (50 + DC)2025 ratesSales Tax Calculator (+ 51 per-state pages)

State income tax — State DORs

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
Each state Department of Revenue publishes its current income-tax brackets. Aggregated with per-state citations in src/data/state-tax-rates-2025.tsState DORs (50 + DC)2025 tax yearPaycheck Calculator

Health & fitness — peer-reviewed formulas

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
WHO BMI classificationWorld Health Organization2024BMI Calculator
Mifflin-St Jeor equation (BMR)American Dietetic Association2005 publicationCalorie Calculator, TDEE, Macro Calculator
US Navy body-fat formula (circumference method)US Navy / NHRC1984 publicationBody Fat Calculator
Karvonen heart-rate-zone formulaKarvonen 19571957 publicationHeart Rate Zone Calculator
Brzycki 1RM estimation formulaBrzycki 19931993 publicationOne-Rep Max Calculator
EFSA Dietary Reference Values for waterEuropean Food Safety Authority2010 publicationWater Intake Calculator
ACOG / Naegele Rule (pregnancy due date)American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists2017 committee opinionPregnancy Due Date Calculator

Document / image standards

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
ISO 32000-1 / Adobe PDF Reference 1.7ISO2008PDF Merge, PDF Splitter, PDF Compressor, PDF Editor, PDF Page Replacer, PDF Password Protect, PDF Unlocker, PDF OCR
pdf-lib (open-source PDF library)MIT-licensed npm package1.17.xAll PDF tools
PDF.js (open-source PDF renderer)Mozilla3.11.174PDF OCR, PDF Editor, PDF Page Replacer
Tesseract.js (open-source OCR engine)Project Naptha4.xPDF OCR, Image to Text
RMBG-1.4 background-removal modelBRIA AI (Apache-2.0)1.4Background Remover

Web standards — IETF / W3C

SourceAgencyVersionUsed by
RFC 4648 — Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data EncodingsIETF2006Base64 Encoder/Decoder
RFC 1951 — DEFLATE Compressed Data FormatIETF1996PDF Compressor (Flate streams)
RFC 4122 — UUID v1/v3/v4/v5IETF2005UUID Generator
RFC 9562 — UUID v6/v7/v8IETF2024UUID Generator
RFC 7519 — JSON Web Token (JWT)IETF2015JWT Decoder
WCAG 2.1 contrast guidelinesW3C2018Color Contrast Checker

License posture

All sources cited above are either:

  • United States federal-government publications, which are works of the federal government and not subject to copyright under 17 U.S.C. § 105;
  • State-government publications, where similar non-copyright status applies in most jurisdictions;
  • Open standards (IETF RFCs, W3C recommendations, ISO standards where excerpted in interoperable form);
  • Open-source software libraries we ship or load (pdf-lib, PDF.js, Tesseract.js, RMBG-1.4) under their respective permissive licenses (MIT, Apache-2.0).

Peer-reviewed health and fitness formulas (Mifflin-St Jeor, Karvonen, Brzycki) are mathematical formulas that are not themselves subject to copyright, though the underlying publications are. We cite the original publication for each.

Reporting an error

If you believe a calculator on this site uses an outdated or incorrect value, email legal@freetoolstogo.com with the tool URL, the value you believe is wrong, and the authoritative source for the correct value. We review every such report.