Sources

How to read an entry

Each block below is one rule file. The version string names the rule set and the tax year it applies to, so tips-2026.1 is the first revision of the tips rules for tax year 2026. The effective window is the period the file governs, not the period it was written in: a change for a later year produces a new file rather than an edit to this one, which is what makes an old result reproducible.

The status word is the launch gate, and it is deliberately blunt. Verified means every figure in the file has been read from a primary source and the citation beside it points at the document that was actually opened. Unverified means at least one of those two things is not yet true — it does not distinguish a wrong number from a right number with a placeholder address, so both hold the gate shut until they are fixed.

The date on a citation is the date that citation was last checked, not the date the rule last changed. Those diverge, and the distinction matters: a rule can go years without moving while the address you would use to confirm it goes stale. The verification date in this section's footer, and the one beside the rule version on the tool itself, is the oldest of the 8 dates below rather than the newest, so what you see is the weakest link and not the flattering one.

When two sources disagree, the form is what a return is filled against

Four kinds of document sit behind these rules and they do different jobs. The statute is the authority and settles what the law says. A Treasury regulation implements it and can narrow it — the tips deduction has one, and the overtime deduction, as far as could be established, does not. Sub-regulatory guidance, meaning a notice or a fact sheet, states the IRS position without the force of a regulation. And the form plus its instructions is the arithmetic a return is actually completed against.

Where they appear to differ, the engine follows the form for computation and the statute for eligibility, and records both. The clearest case is rounding: two of the three $1,000-step phase-outs drop a partial step and one counts it as a whole step, and it is the form's line instructions that say so in each direction. The methodology page works that arithmetic through with the engine's own output.

Documents read in the verification pass, not yet written into the files

The citation entries above are what the engine ships. They are not the same as what has been read. A primary-source pass on 15 Aug 2026 went through the documents below in full and recorded every figure it checked, but the addresses inside several rule files still point at a newsroom index or a bare host rather than at the document actually opened. Until each figure's own citation names the document a reader could follow, the file stays unverified, however sound the number turned out to be.

• P.L. 119-21 as enacted (govinfo) · The operative text of all four deductions, read from the enrolled public law rather than a code mirror.
• Schedule 1-A (Form 1040), Additional Deductions · The computation of record. Part II tips, Part III overtime, Part IV car-loan interest, Part V seniors, all reading one MAGI figure from Part I.
• Instructions for Form 1040, including Schedule 1-A · The line-by-line rounding instructions, and the statement that these deductions are available whether or not you itemise.
• Rev. Proc. 2025-32 · The published 2026 bracket tables and standard deduction amounts, and the absence of any inflation section for the four OBBBA deductions.
• TD 10044, final regulations under 26 CFR § 1.224-1 · The tips rulemaking: the occupation table, the phase-out ordering, and the confirmation that the cap is per return rather than per spouse.
• Notice 2025-69 · The definition of the FLSA overtime premium, and the exclusions for above-premium pay and for overtime owed only under state law or a bargaining agreement.
• Fact sheet FS-2026-13 · The current IRS question-and-answer guidance on the overtime deduction.
• Occupations that customarily and regularly received tips on or before 31 Dec 2024 · The published occupation list, enumerated code by code against the regulation's own table.
• 2026 General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3 · Where an employer reports these amounts, which is what makes a figure checkable against your own paperwork.

Several official hosts refuse automated requests, and the list above reflects the route taken around each. The Code of Federal Regulations site and the Federal Register's document pages both redirect to a bot block, so the tips regulation was read from the Federal Register's public-inspection copy of the same document. The congressional site returns an error and the House's U.S. Code service times out, so every statutory quotation comes from the enrolled public law on govinfo instead of a code section. One consequence is worth naming rather than burying: because the Federal Register could not be searched, no Treasury regulation implementing the overtime deduction was located and its absence is not established.

Two of these files change every year and four of them do not

The bracket table and the standard deduction are inflation-adjusted and are reissued by the IRS each autumn for the following year, so that file is re-cut annually and the whole section moves with it. The four deduction files do not work that way. Neither the tips section nor the overtime section contains an inflation-adjustment clause, and the revenue procedure carrying the 2026 adjustments has no entry for either, which is the positive confirmation that the caps and thresholds are fixed statutory figures rather than values awaiting an update. The senior and car-loan figures are fixed for the same reason.

The occupation list is fixed by a different mechanism again: it is defined by reference to occupations that customarily and regularly received tips on or before 31 Dec 2024, so it is not an annually indexed table. What can move it is an amendment to the regulation that carries it, which is a Federal Register event rather than a filing-season one.

All four deduction files carry a sunset. The statutes allow nothing for a taxable year beginning after 31 Dec 2028, so these files must not be cloned forward past tax year 2028. A rule file that outlived its statute produces confident arithmetic for a deduction that no longer exists, which is a worse failure than a missing file. Every change to any of them is dated on the changelog, and the standard a change has to meet is set out in the editorial policy.