Editorial Standards and Sources

Our resource library is educational, not a source of individualized legal, tax, lending, environmental, engineering, or valuation advice. We favor current primary sources and disclose when an item requires local verification.

Our source-of-truth process

1. Classify the claim. Regulated, tax, lending, and public-data claims require an authoritative source; business-specific valuation and transaction claims require the relevant records and advisers.
2. Use primary sources first. We use agencies, statutes, official forms, and direct public-data publishers where possible—not unattributed market summaries.
3. Record scope and review date. Each approved source has a purpose and a review date. We do not use it beyond its scope.
4. Verify local and transaction facts at use. Permits, zoning, sewer terms, licenses, contracts, and tax treatment may change and must be confirmed with the responsible authority or qualified adviser.
5. Correct or remove unsupported claims. We do not publish universal deal timelines, buyer counts, valuations, or local market statistics without dated, attributable evidence.

Approved source registry

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Stormwater BMP: Municipal Vehicle and Equipment Washing — Wash-water containment, treatment, reuse, and local sewer-authority review. Reviewed 2026-09-22.
• U.S. Small Business Administration: 7(a) Loans — Current 7(a) uses, high-level eligibility, and lender-led application process. Reviewed 2026-09-22.
• Internal Revenue Service: Instructions for Form 8594 — Asset-acquisition reporting and purchase-price allocation. Reviewed 2026-09-22.
• U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey data via API — Refreshable population, income, housing, and transportation estimates; estimates are not car-wash-market data. Reviewed 2026-09-22.
• Federal Trade Commission: Franchise Rule — Franchise disclosure, including initial fees, recurring fees, and estimated initial investment. Reviewed 2026-09-22.
• Internal Revenue Service: Publication 946: How To Depreciate Property — Depreciation and Section 179 rules for business property; tax outcomes depend on facts and current law. Reviewed 2026-09-22.

Data refresh rule

City and state data must be refreshed from a documented official dataset, with geography, vintage, field definition, retrieval date, and transformation recorded in the repository. It must never be presented as a car-wash count, buyer-demand metric, valuation, or legal requirement unless the cited source actually supports that specific claim.