The rules
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Primary sources, linked
For rules, chapters link to the agency that administers them: IRS, SBA, DOL, FinCEN or your Secretary of State. For tools and production instructions, we link to official documentation. A supplier's specification describes its service, not evidence that it is better than another.
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Say when it varies
Formation, licensing, worker classification and tax are substantially state-level. Where the answer depends on where you are, we say so and name the body that decides.
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Describe mechanisms, not stale numbers
Thresholds and rates are indexed and revised. We explain how something works and tell you to confirm the current figure, rather than printing a number that will be wrong within a year and look authoritative while it is.
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Flag what changed
When a rule changes materially we say so prominently, because the real risk is acting on guidance that was correct when it was written. The 2026 change to federal beneficial ownership reporting is the clearest current example.
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Say when you need a professional
Some questions genuinely depend on specifics a general guide cannot see. We would rather tell you that than write something confident and useless.
Practical tools and examples
The Customers chapters offer editorial recommendations about offers, marketing spend, printed materials and follow-up. We explain the reasons and tradeoffs rather than promising leads, sales or a return on spend. Copyable briefs and scripts are starting points to adapt to your work, not legal documents.
Worked businesses and calculations are clearly labelled as hypothetical. They show how to think through a decision; they are not case studies, measured results or typical response rates. Sources sit beside the requirement or instruction they support so you can check it while reading.
What we will not publish
Never on this site
- Scores, star ratings, grades or tier lists
- Claims to have tested or benchmarked a service
- Invented statistics, surveys or counts
- A described methodology for work that did not happen
- Urgency about deadlines that do not apply to the reader
What we do instead
- Editorial judgement, in words, with reasons
- Links to the agency that actually decides
- Explicit uncertainty where rules vary
- "Check the current figure" rather than false precision
Small-business content is full of manufactured authority - scores with no scoring behind them, rankings with no ranking, and filing deadlines presented with urgency by people selling the filing. Some of it is actively harmful: services were still marketing BOI filings to domestic companies after the requirement was removed. We would rather say plainly what we know and where it came from.
Commercial relationships
Where we have one, we disclose it. The current position is on the disclosure page, and it is kept accurate - if it changes, that page changes first.
Corrections
We fix pages rather than quietly removing them. If you can, tell us the chapter, what is wrong, and your state - that is where a general handbook is most likely to drift.