Reference material for people actually taking the Certified Payroll Professional exam. Dates, weightings, law years, and the figures that changed — written down properly, with the source cited, so you do not have to reconstruct them from a forum thread.
Everything here is free to read and requires nothing. We do sell a question bank, and we mention it, but these pages are written to be useful on their own. Where a guide states a figure, it names where the figure came from — and where we could not verify something, it says so rather than guessing.
Two separate changes land on the same date. The content outline reweights — the old and new percentages are set out side by side, which is the table nobody else has published. And the tested law year moves from January 1, 2025 to January 1, 2026, which quietly rewrites the answer to every question with a dollar figure in it: wage base, deferral limits, the §129 dependent care exclusion, and the whole OBBBA layer with its new W-2 Box 12 codes.
Also covers the Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 testing windows, registration deadlines, exam fees and format, and an honest answer to “is my 2025 study guide still valid?”
Most gross-to-net questions that get marked wrong are not marked wrong for arithmetic. They are marked wrong because two steps were swapped. The full eight-rung order, a worked semi-monthly example, and what it costs when a Section 125 premium ends up on the wrong side of the tax calculation.
Also covers the semi-monthly versus bi-weekly period count, a table of which deductions are exempt from which taxes, and why rounding early drifts you off the published answer.
The hourly rate on the offer letter stops being the regular rate the moment a nondiscretionary bonus exists. Worked all the way through with 46 hours and a $150 production bonus, including the denominator people get wrong and the difference between owing the half and owing the time-and-a-half.
Three ways to price the same overtime, two of which are wrong, with what each one costs. Plus what belongs in the regular rate and what stays out.
A traditional deferral is exempt from federal income tax and not from FICA. That single asymmetry is why a paystub carries two different taxable-wage figures, and it is the most-missed item in payroll calculation questions.
Worked through a $7,200 paycheck where income-tax wages come to $6,588 and FICA wages to $7,020, with what using the wrong one costs. Also why W-2 Box 1 is lower than Boxes 3 and 5, and how Roth mirrors it.
Coming next. Guides we are writing, roughly in this order:
Reading about the exam is not studying for it. If you want to know which of the seven content areas is your weak one before you plan anything, the assessment is 20 questions, free, and gives you a per-area breakdown. No card, no obligation.
The full bank is 570 questions for $79 once, with a written explanation on every one, built to the September 5, 2026 outline and to federal law as of January 1, 2026 — which is the whole point of the guide above.
Take the free 20-question assessment → See the full question bank →Found an error, or want a guide on something specific? Email caelixpublishing@gmail.com. Corrections get made fast and requests genuinely shape what gets written next.