A tool, not a course

Every number in it can be traced back to the government page it came from.

Retirement tax, Medicare and state-by-state answers for people who are about to make a decision that does not reverse. Press the source button beside any figure and you get the issuing body, the document, the link, and the day it was read.

You are not behind. Nobody was ever told this.

You could have done everything right — saved for thirty years, paid off the house, lived below your means — and still not know whether the state you are thinking of moving to taxes the money you take out of your own retirement account. Or that your Medicare premium this year was set by a tax return you filed two years ago. Or that one extra dollar of income can take an entire health-insurance credit, not a slice of it.

None of that is a gap in you. No letter arrives about any of it. The forms have no box for it. The people on the other side of the table do this for a living; you do it once.

So this is a tool for checking, not a course to sit through. You open it, you get an answer, and you can see the page the answer came from.

Half one

Where should I retire?

Pick a state. You get four answers, each with its own document:

• Does this state tax your Social Security?
• Does it tax money you take out of a retirement account?
• Is there a state death tax, and above what?
• Is there a property tax break for older people — and does the state run it, or the county?

Then put two states side by side, and print a sheet for your own with every source listed.

Half two

What happens to my money?

Three calculators. You type your own numbers in; every figure that comes back has a source button beside it.

My husband or wife died

One Social Security cheque stops. The standard deduction halves. The brackets halve. The income does not fall as far as the tax allowance does, so the tax bill can go up in the year everything got worse. This shows you by how much — and names the form that can bring a Medicare premium back down, which almost nobody is told about.

I am retiring before 65

The years between the last day of work and the first day of Medicare are priced on an income you predict in October and prove fourteen months later. Two things about 2026 catch people, and both are in here with their documents: the help stops dead at 400 percent of the poverty line, and the cap on paying it back is gone.

My Medicare bill went up

It was set by the income on a tax return from two years ago. If that year is gone — you stopped working, a spouse died, a pension ended — the regulation lists seven events that let you ask for a newer year to be used. The app names the event, the form, and the line in the agency's own staff manual that says the form is optional.

Why the source button is the whole product

Anybody can put a number on a screen. The question that matters at this age, with this much money, is who says so, and when did they say it.

So the app is built the other way round from most: a figure cannot be displayed at all unless a document is attached to it. If the paperwork is missing, the app says "Not checked yet". It never guesses, and it never rounds a fact into a feeling.

Every source record carries the date it was read. When a figure changes — and they change every autumn — the date moves where you can see it.

And it prints something worth keeping

Not a screenshot of a web page. A two-page record: your numbers, the answer, the assumptions, and a sources page listing every document behind every figure with the date it was read.

That is the page you hand to a tax professional so they can check the work instead of starting again — and the page that is still in the folder when somebody has to go through it later.

What you actually get

A link. It opens in the browser you already use, on a phone, a tablet or a computer. There is nothing to download and nothing to unzip.

It is a web app, not a phone app. No App Store, no Google Play, no account to create. If you want it on your home screen, your browser will put it there in two taps, and after that it opens like anything else on the screen — with the internet switched off, on a plane, in a waiting room.

Nothing you type leaves your device. There is no login, no cloud, no analytics on your figures. The arithmetic happens in your own browser.

What this is not

• Not advice. It shows arithmetic and names the law behind it. Nobody here is an adviser, an accountant or an attorney, and nobody here knows your situation.
• Not a Medicaid tool. Medicaid eligibility, asset transfers and trust funding stay free and stay on the channel. None of it is behind a payment, ever.
• Not a subscription. One payment. Nothing renews.
• Not discounted. There is no launch offer, no countdown and no coupon. A discount next month is a tax on whoever trusted you first.
• Not a promise about your outcome. It will not make you money. It tells you what the rules say and where to read them.

$79, once

That is the price today and the price in six months. If you buy it now and a friend buys it in March, you both paid $79.

Questions people ask

One more thing, and then I will stop

If you take nothing else from this page, take the habit: when a number about your own money matters, ask who published it and when. You can do that without buying anything. It is slow, and that is the only reason this exists.