Primary sources only
Every substantive claim on this site is traceable to a verifiable primary source. The hierarchy used:
- United States federal rules: the Internal Revenue Code via Cornell Legal Information Institute, IRS publications and forms, the Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Transportation.
- Florida state rules: the Florida Statutes (official version on the Florida Senate site), the Florida Department of Revenue, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, and the county property appraiser offices.
- Canada federal rules: Canada.ca and the Canada Revenue Agency, Department of Finance Canada, and the Canada Border Services Agency.
- Canada provincial rules: the provincial gazettes and ministries (RAMQ Québec, OHIP Ontario, MSP British Columbia, AHCIP Alberta, and equivalents).
- International: the Canada-United States Tax Convention.
Secondary sources (private firms, law-firm commentary, news outlets) are used only to triangulate a primary claim and are never cited as the sole basis for a figure.
Three explicit markers on every claim
Every substantive statement in a guide is tagged with one of three markers, never mixed:
- Verified fact: a statement that can be checked against a primary source cited at the bottom of the guide. Comes with the source name and a date.
- Typical range: a practical estimate based on market observation or a span of public figures. Never published as a single value; always presented as a range with a context. Used for things like “closing costs typically run 1.5 % to 2.5 % of the purchase price for a Canadian buyer”.
- Opinion: editorial judgment. Used sparingly and labelled explicitly. Example: a recommendation between two equally legal strategies.
This split exists to keep the reader’s mental model clean. A reader should never wonder whether they are looking at law, at market practice, or at editorial position.
Jurisdictional precision
Every legal, tax, or regulatory claim is tagged with its level: federal United States, Florida state, federal Canada, provincial Canada. Cross-jurisdiction topics include an explicit perimeter statement. For example: Florida has no state-level estate tax, but the United States federal estate tax applies to non-residents on the value of US-situs assets above USD 60,000. A claim that mixes levels under a single label is considered an editorial defect and is corrected on the next revision pass.
Revision discipline
Every guide carries two visible dates: Published (the first publication date, fixed) and Last reviewed (bumped on every revision, including purely cosmetic ones, so the freshness signal is real). When a primary source changes a number, a deadline, or a procedure, the affected guides are flagged and revised. The last reviewed date is the readers’ first-line verification.
Reporting an error
Factual errors are reported via the Report an error page. The editorial commitment is acknowledgement within seven days and resolution within twenty-one days, with the corrected guide carrying its updated last reviewed date.