How we make money
Advertising and affiliate commissions, and what they do not buy.
TopicDrill Editorial Editorial teamEvery figure on this site is checked against its primary source before publication, and re-checked when that source republishes.
TopicDrill makes money from advertising and from affiliate commissions when a reader uses a link to a product we recommend. Commissions never affect which products we recommend or how we rank them, and every page containing affiliate links says so above the article.
Contents
The two sources
Affiliate commissions. When we recommend a product and a reader signs up through our link, the company sometimes pays us. The reader pays nothing extra.
Advertising. Display advertising sold against our pages. Advertisers have no involvement in editorial and cannot see coverage before it publishes.
What money does not buy
- A place in a ranking. No company can pay to appear in a comparison or to rank higher in one. Products that pay nothing appear, and sometimes win.
- A rating. Ratings come from the criteria published on each comparison, applied the same way to every product in the field.
- Removal of criticism. We say what is wrong with products we recommend.
- Coverage. We choose what to write about.
Where the conflict actually sits
The honest version: we earn more from some categories than others, and that shapes which subjects get written about first. A comparison of business bank accounts earns money and a guide to FICA thresholds does not. We publish both, but we are not pretending the incentive is invisible.
What we can promise is narrower and more checkable: within a piece, the commission on a product has no bearing on where it lands.
How to tell
Every page containing affiliate links carries a disclosure above the article, not buried at the bottom. Outbound partner links pass through /go/ on this domain so they can be identified, audited and disabled from one place.
Current status
Affiliate links on this site are seeded but not yet active. No commission relationship is live. When that changes, this page changes with it, and the disclosures on individual pages are already in place.
Every figure on this page is attributed to a named source with the date it took effect. Our reviewers check them against the primary source before publication.
About our expert
Editorial team
Experience
We publish nothing without a source. Every rate, threshold and limit on this site is attributed to the IRS, the SSA, the Department of Labor or a state revenue department, with the date that figure took effect recorded alongside it.
When a source republishes, the figure is re-checked and the page's updated date moves. Where a number is disputed or varies by locality, we say so on the page rather than picking one and hoping.
Areas of expertise
- Federal tax
- State tax
- Payroll
- Small business
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