Research: original analysis of US public data
Original analysis built from official US data. Each piece publishes the complete dataset rather than a sample, states its method and its limits in the open, and computes every figure at build time from a stored source file, so nothing is hand-typed and nothing drifts. All of it is free to quote and cite with a link.
- Property tax by county: all 3,133 counties ranked
The gap between two counties in the same state is routinely wider than the gap between states. Highest to lowest is about 51 times.
- The minimum wage has never been cut. It lost half its value anyway.
Peak purchasing power was 1968, worth $14.81 in today's money. The current $7.25 buys 51% less, after the longest freeze on record.
- Seventy years of the fed funds rate, against the inflation it was chasing
From the 16.38% peak of 1981 to a decade of near zero that has no precedent in the record, and the fastest two-year jump in modern times.
- Unemployment benefits by state: what the safety net actually pays
The same job loss is worth 5.1 times more in Washington than in Mississippi, and 26 weeks is no longer the standard duration.
- Gas tax by state: the gap at the pump
State gasoline excise runs from 8.95 cents a gallon to 63.4 cents, about $8.17 of tax difference on a single fill-up.
- Where dying is taxed, and from what threshold
Only a minority of states charge an estate or inheritance tax, and among those that do the exemption varies about fifteenfold, from $1M to $15M.
- What unemployment insurance costs an employer, state by state
The ceiling on state unemployment tax runs from $378 to $4,506 per employee a year, driven as much by the taxable wage base as by the rate.
- What your state gives you for saving in a 529, if anything
Thirteen states give no state tax benefit at all, and among those that do, a small credit often beats a large-looking deduction.
Using this work
The underlying figures are public data from US government sources, and our compilations, derived measures and analysis may be quoted freely with credit to CalculatorHub and a link to the piece you are citing. Journalists are welcome to ask for a cut of the data for a specific state or county: the full tables are on each page, and every page names the authority behind each number.
How we source, store and verify figures is set out in our methodology, and the fields where we do and do not have specialist review are listed on our review panel page.