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Terms of Service

Last updated 26 July 2026

These terms govern use of usaref (the “Service”), operated by 3L Group Consulting (PTY) LTD. By calling the API you agree to them.

What the Service provides

usaref publishes usaref - North American government reference data. us eval free. $0.005 Base USDC. Cited.: government and central-bank reference data — policy rates, VAT, minimum wages, CPI, corporate and personal income tax and public holidays — together with computed answers derived from that data, such as working-day calculations and tax workings. Every value carries a citation to its official source, an effective date and the date it was last confirmed.

Independence and accuracy

3L Group Consulting (PTY) LTD is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any government, central bank, revenue authority or public body. Data is compiled from official published sources and reproduced with attribution.

We take considerable care with accuracy: values are cited to primary sources, adversarially verified, flagged when past their expected update cycle, and served as null with an explanation rather than guessed when a figure genuinely does not exist. Even so, official sources are sometimes themselves out of date, and rates change without notice. You must verify against the cited official source before relying on any value for a legal, tax, payroll or financial decision. The Service is provided “as is”, without warranty of accuracy, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose.

How we work, and how to check that we do

Any data service can assert that it cites its sources and never guesses. Those are sentences, and sentences are cheap. The commitments below are stated here because each one is verifiable from outside, without taking our word for it or asking us anything — that, rather than the wording, is what we ask you to judge us on.

  1. Every value names the instrument, not the institution. A citation identifies the gazette, statute, decision or authority publication the figure was read from, with the provision where it appears — not merely the body that issued it. Check it: open the source.url on any response and find the number.
  2. The cited document is fingerprinted and archived. We hold a SHA-256 over the bytes of each cited source as retrieved, with the dates first and last seen, so a document that changes under us is detectable rather than silent. Check it: https://usaref.dev/provenance, free.
  3. Values are researched and then adversarially challenged. One process establishes a value against primary sources; a second is tasked with refuting it before it is served. Where the primary instrument could not be read, the response says so in confidence and confidence_note rather than presenting a corroborated guess as a read one.
  4. We refuse, uncharged, rather than approximate. Out-of-coverage ranges, undated commencements, regimes with no single national rate and conventions not in force on the date asked are returned as reasoned refusals with machine-readable codes, validated before the payment gate.
  5. We publish our own errors. Mistakes we have shipped are written up with their cause and the change that prevents recurrence. Check it: https://usaref.dev/accuracy.
  6. Answers can be signed. Any value is available as an Ed25519-signed extract carrying its citation, the archived document hash and the confirmation chain, verifiable against a public key we publish. Check it: https://usaref.dev/certified/public-key.
  7. We are an identifiable counterparty. The Service is operated by 3L Group Consulting (PTY) LTD, a company registered in South Africa, reachable at a named human address published in security.txt and in our terms. Corrections sent with a primary source are acted on and credited on the accuracy record.

None of this makes a value correct. It makes a value checkable, which is the most any reference service can honestly offer — and it is why the obligation in the paragraph above, to verify against the cited source before you rely on a figure, is stated as plainly as it is.

Computed answers, and what this Service is not

Some endpoints return computed answers rather than cited values: working-day counts, minimum-wage compliance verdicts, income-tax and payroll workings, VAT breakdowns, cross-border VAT treatment and settlement dates. These are labelled basis: "computed" in the response and carry their own disclaimer.

A cited value can be checked against the instrument behind it. A computed answer cannot — no gazette states your net pay. A computation applies the general statutory case to the inputs you supply; it does not know your circumstances, reliefs, exemptions, contractual terms, sector rules or elections, and where it must assume something (such as a pay composition) the assumption is stated in the response and is a convention rather than a statute.

Nothing this Service returns is tax, legal, accounting, actuarial or financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to take or refrain from any action. It is reference data and arithmetic performed on reference data. 3L Group Consulting (PTY) LTD is not a registered tax practitioner, financial services provider, accountant or law firm in any jurisdiction, and no professional relationship arises from your use of the Service. You remain responsible for any filing, payment, disclosure or decision you make, and you should obtain advice from a qualified professional in the relevant jurisdiction before relying on any output for one.

Acceptable use

Payment

Paid endpoints may be accessed either by per-call payment over the x402 protocol, or with an API key carrying prepaid credit purchased by card. Prices are shown at the point of purchase and in the machine-readable payment response. Card payments are processed by our payment provider, who acts as merchant of record for those transactions.

Availability

We aim for high availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted service. Deployments may cause brief interruptions. We may change, add or withdraw endpoints and data series.

Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, 3L Group Consulting (PTY) LTD’s total liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid for the Service in the three months preceding the claim. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including loss of profit, arising from reliance on the data.

Changes and governing law

We may update these terms; the date above records the current version. These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Contact

[email protected]