Sources

A rules file carries six things, and the citation is only one of them

Each file states a ruleset version, an effective range so a rule that changes mid-year is a new dated file rather than an edit to code, a verification status, a plain-language note describing how the values are meant to be read, the values themselves, and its citations — each with a URL and the date someone last opened it. Nothing numeric is written into a TypeScript file. The formulas that consume these values are set out on methodology, and every change to any of them lands on the changelog.

Of the 21 citations below, 6 carry no verification date. That is not a formatting gap: it means the document at that URL has not been fetched and read by anyone here, so the citation records an intention rather than an act. Where a figure rests on a citation like that, the figure is verified elsewhere or it is not verified at all, and this page says which.

Only a primary source closes a gap

Statute, regulation, IRS guidance, a Federal Register notice, or a government dataset — those close a question. A secondary source may cross-check a value and may never close it, and a row resting on one stays labelled until the authoritative document has been read. Where a source could not be reached, the value is left exactly as it was and the gap is recorded rather than quietly improved. That discipline is why several citations below point at govinfo rather than the obvious host: the regulations site and the Federal Register site both redirect automated requests to a block page, so a successful response from either proves nothing, while govinfo serves authenticated GPO text.

What each status means

• SAMPLE_DATA — illustrative figures written so the engine could be built and tested; there is nothing in them to verify.
• UNVERIFIED — the machine-readable field has not been advanced, which does not always mean the values are wrong — see the note below.
• VERIFIED_STATUTORY — read verbatim against the statute or regulation itself, from an authenticated government text.

The UNVERIFIED label deserves the qualification. A primary-source audit dated 15 August 2026 read the applicable-percentage table against the controlling revenue procedure and found every band boundary and every basis-point value to match exactly, and it read nine of eleven contribution limits and all fifty-one Medicaid flags the same way. It recommended the status field move. The field has not been moved, so it still reads UNVERIFIED here — this page publishes the machine-readable value rather than a friendlier summary of it. The figures that audit found wrong were corrected, and the repealed rule it found was removed; all of it is on the changelog.

Each of these is re-checked when its publisher publishes

The poverty guidelines arrive in mid-January and drive the following coverage year. HSA limits land around May. The §36B applicable-percentage table and the required contribution percentage arrive in mid-summer. Retirement and IRA cost-of-living figures come around October, the Social Security wage base around October and November, and the CMS marketplace public use files for the next plan year at roughly the same time. Medicaid expansion status is re-derived quarterly from the federal enrollment dataset rather than from a narrative page. Legislation amending §36B is watched continuously, because that is the failure mode this whole apparatus exists for: the audit above found a repayment cap that Congress had already repealed underneath a rules file nobody was watching. Indexed values drift on a schedule. Statutory structure does not.

Two known gaps will not close on a schedule. The 2026 Form 8962 and its instructions are unpublished until roughly January 2027, so the cliff convention rests on the 2025 and 2020 editions, which agree word for word across the ARPA boundary. And the federal list of state-specific age-rating variations was last updated in December 2021, with no newer version in existence. Both are described in full on methodology and in the about page's account of what is real data today and what is placeholder.