I Turned Confusing Tax Law Into a Free Tool Anyone Can Use

Waleed Ahmed — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 19:09:51 +0000

This is a submission for the MLH x DEV Writing Challenge

MyOvertimeTax.com is a free website that helps American hourly workers understand the new "no tax on overtime" deduction. In July 2025, the US signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which lets eligible workers deduct the premium half of their overtime pay from federal income tax for tax years 2025 through 2028. Most workers had no idea how much this was worth for them, so I built a calculator that answers that in under a minute.

The main calculator takes your hourly rate, overtime hours, and filing status, then applies the real 2026 rules: the $12,500 single and $25,000 joint caps, the MAGI phaseout, and your marginal tax bracket. It also has a W-2 mode where you enter your Box 12 Code TT amount straight from your 2026 W-2. Around it I built supporting calculators (overtime refund estimator, overtime rate calculator, no tax on tips, senior bonus deduction) plus plain-language guides, an FAQ, and a methodology page that shows every step of the math.

What inspired it was simple. I am learning SEO and building my first niche website, and I wanted something that solves a real problem for real people instead of another thin content site. Tax law is confusing, and hourly workers are exactly the people who cannot afford a tax advisor. If my site saves one nurse or warehouse worker a surprise at tax time, it did its job.

What I learned: how to read actual IRS guidance and turn it into code, how to ship a fast static site on Cloudflare Pages with GitHub, and that simple beats clever. Every page on the site is written so a 4th grader can follow it, because that is who I am writing for.

Try it live: https://www.myovertimetax.com

Enter any hourly rate and weekly overtime hours and you get three numbers instantly: your qualified overtime premium, your estimated deduction, and your estimated federal tax savings. There is also a short walkthrough video here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x3uaFZGogLg

I build this one with MLH partner technologies. The stack is a static site deployed through GitHub to Cloudflare Pages, with Cloudflare handling DNS, SSL, and security, and Google Analytics for traffic. Everything runs on free tiers.

I build this at a hackathon. I built it solo, late at night, as my first real website while learning SEO through an online course. So I will tell you about the closest thing I have to a hackathon story.

For about four days straight, it was just me, my laptop, and a checklist. I read IRS guidance documents, turned tax law into calculator logic, broke the site, fixed it, moved it to Cloudflare, secured it, and started a YouTube channel for it. No team, no mentors in the room, no pizza at 2am. Just the quiet pressure of wanting it to be real.

What I will remember most is the first visitor who found the calculator through Google search. A stranger typed a question, and my site answered it. That one visit taught me more than any event could: build something useful, and the internet will find it.

DEV Community: Waleed Ahmed

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I Turned Confusing Tax Law Into a Free Tool Anyone Can Use

I Turned Confusing Tax Law Into a Free Tool Anyone Can Use