Editorial Policy

What the site is trying to do

The site exists to make UK tax, payroll, family-threshold, property and investing questions easier to understand without hiding the useful part behind a paywall. The goal is practical clarity, not volume for its own sake.

How pages are researched

• Calculators are based on published UK thresholds, allowances and rule summaries from official sources wherever possible.
• Guide pages are written to connect the public rule to the next practical user decision.
• Update pages are meant to be revisited and are treated differently from evergreen explainers.

How review works

• Pages are labelled with a visible review date and tax-year scope.
• After each Budget and at the start of each tax year, affected calculators and pages are rechecked and their review date updated.
• Long-form guides, hubs and FAQ pages are reviewed when linked calculators or source rules change.

What the site does not do

• It does not provide regulated personal financial advice.
• It does not pretend a first-pass calculator captures every edge case.
• It does not use affiliate links.

Corrections and updates

If a rule, rate or explanation is wrong, the priority is to correct the live page quickly and then review the linked pages that depend on it. When a tax-year change affects an existing page, the update should be reflected in the visible review information and linked update hubs. Reader corrections are welcome via the contact form. Substantive corrections are listed with the date in the changelog, so the editorial trail can be checked.

Sources we rely on

UK Tax Drag works from public, primary and authoritative sources for the rules, rates and thresholds it cites. The standard hierarchy:

• HMRC and gov.uk for income tax bands, National Insurance rates, ISA allowances, pension annual allowances, dividend rates, capital gains rates, stamp duty bands, IHT thresholds, and most other tax rules.
• HM Treasury publications, including Budget documents and the Autumn Statement, for forward-looking tax-year changes.
• Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for forecasts and fiscal-context references.
• Bank of England for base rate, monetary policy, and inflation references.
• FCA, MoneyHelper, and the Pensions Regulator for consumer-protection and regulated-advice context.
• ETF and fund factsheets directly from issuers (Vanguard, BlackRock/iShares, Invesco, etc.) for ongoing charges, distribution policy, and constituent data.
• Official statistics from the Office for National Statistics for cost-of-living, household income, and demographic context.

Where a third-party source (such as a financial-press article) is cited as supporting evidence, the underlying official source is also linked. The aim is to link the primary text behind each rule a page relies on.

How facts are checked

Figures that affect a calculator or a guide are checked against at least one primary source. For tax rates and thresholds, the check is against the relevant GOV.UK page or HMRC manual. For ETF metrics, it is against the latest issuer factsheet. Errors still get through; when one is found, it is corrected and listed in the changelog. Where a number is illustrative (for example, a sample rate of return in a long-term projection), the figure is flagged in the page text as illustrative and a typical range is given to avoid implying a forecast.

Calculators are checked with edge-case inputs such as zero income, income exactly on a threshold and very high income, and their outputs are compared against worked examples. High-risk calculators also have automated test cases checked before each update.

Conflicts of interest

UK Tax Drag is an independently-run educational site. The only funding the site is set up to receive is display advertising from Google (see advertising policy). The Editor has no commercial relationships with HMRC, with any specific tax-software provider, with any specific pension or investment platform, or with any specific ETF issuer. Where a calculator or guide compares specific products (for example, two ETFs side-by-side), the comparison is made on observable, public metrics only.

If the Editor has a personal financial interest in a topic being covered (for example, holding shares in a company being discussed), that interest is disclosed at the foot of the relevant page. The site does not accept paid placement, paid links, or sponsored content. If that ever changes, the change will be announced on the changelog and the relevant pages will be clearly labelled.

Editorial responsibility

UK Tax Drag is written and edited by one person, the Editor, in England. The Editor reviews pages before they are published, is responsible for correcting them, and can be reached through the contact form. UK Tax Drag has no outside contributors. Every page is published by Finsolve Consulting Limited (company no. 15562432), which is accountable for it.

Use of generative AI

Pages on UK Tax Drag are drafted, edited and coded with the help of AI tools. Tax figures and rules are checked against HMRC, GOV.UK or another primary source, and the Editor reviews changes before they are published. Checking reduces errors but does not remove them all; corrections are listed in the changelog. AI output is never treated as the source of a tax rule, threshold or figure, and any citation an AI tool suggests is checked against the primary source before it is used. The independence statement gives the same account.

Related policies

See the privacy and consent policy, the advertising policy, the methodology page for how the calculators are built, the independence note for the broader funding context, and the content disclaimer for the limits of what the site can do.