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Author Founder & operator Engine last verified September 5, 2026

Sertunç Özgüneş

Founder and operator of PaycheckForge, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He is the person behind every estimate on this site: the tax parameters, the sources they are read from, the verification dates shown on each page and the correction channel.

Role: Founder · sole operator · data controller named in the privacy policy and terms.

Annual tax liability is estimated and spread evenly across pay periods; employer withholding tables can differ. Results are planning estimates — not tax, legal or financial advice.

What he is responsible for

  • The tax engine. Selecting and encoding the tax year 2026 federal, FICA and state parameters, and documenting every simplification on the Methodology & Tax Engine page.
  • Source verification. Each parameter is read from a primary document with a recorded retrieval date. The current data set was last verified on ; that date is printed on every calculator, guide and article.
  • The open rule pack. Publishing the same parameters as a machine-readable file at /rules-2026.json so anyone can check what a result was based on.
  • Editorial content. Guides, blog articles and newsroom updates are written and reviewed against the sources listed on each page.

Editorial standards

  • Sources on every page. Figures trace to a named primary document (IRS, SSA, Tax Foundation, BLS, BEA) with a retrieval date, never to an unnamed summary.
  • Estimates, stated as estimates. Annual liability is spread evenly across pay periods; employer withholding tables and local taxes can differ, and the site says so.
  • Corrections welcome. A stale figure or a missing state rule can be reported through the contact page with the page URL and tax year; fixes ship with an engine version bump recorded in the changelog.
  • Private by design. Calculations run in your browser. If you choose “Explain this result,” the calculated breakdown and relevant assumptions are sent to our explanation service and Anthropic. This is optional and never automatic. Financial values are never sent to analytics.

Primary sources he verifies against (tax year 2026)

PaycheckForge

Paycheck, tax and salary topics explained in plain language on his YouTube channel.

Watch on YouTube

Methodology & tax engine

How every estimate is computed, the engine changelog, test coverage and the CC BY 4.0 rule pack.

Read the methodology

Contact

Email is the only public channel: hello@paycheckforge.com. Corrections, press and data questions all go there.

Contact page