Tax Planner — Help
A federal income-tax planning workbench built around two editable scenarios, A and B. Enter the client's picture once on the Single-Year tab; every other tool projects, stress-tests, or optimizes from those inputs. Terms with a dotted underline have a click-to-open tooltip. All figures are federal (with an optional state layer where noted), use the selected year's tables, and are illustrations — not tax advice.
Projections
🧮 Single-Year Compare
Side-by-side tax calculation for scenarios A and B; everything updates live. Enter Filing & Profile, Income (ordinary, qualified dividends, short/long gains, IRA/pension, Social Security, business), Adjustments & Deductions (itemized with the SALT cap, or the standard deduction — whichever is larger is used), and Credits & Payments. The Comparison panel shows the full stack — AGI, taxable income, ordinary and capital-gains tax, NIIT, marginal & effective rates, refund/owed — plus plain-English observations. Use it for any "what if": a Roth conversion, extra gain, filing status, a state move, bunching deductions.
📈 Multi-Year Projection
Rolls both scenarios forward from their base-year inputs. Set the age range, income growth, inflation (indexes the federal tables), and retire-at age, and toggle which income items to include. Outputs a Total-Tax-Over-Time chart (A vs B) and a year-by-year table. Models inflation-indexed brackets, the 65+ standard deduction, and capital-loss carryforward.
Retirement
🏛️ Social Security
Claiming analysis. Enter the FRA benefit from the SSA statement, or compute the PIA from AIME via the bend points. Shows the benefit by claiming age (62–70), the earnings test if claiming early while working, and household spousal & survivor benefits.
📉 RMD
Required Minimum Distributions under SECURE 2.0 using the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table — enter balance and age for the schedule and starting age.
🔄 Roth Optimizer
Compares a fill-to-bracket conversion ladder against doing nothing, on lifetime tax. Enter balances/returns, retirement income, and the conversion strategy (which bracket to fill, over how many years).
🪣 Withdrawal Order
Compares a conventional drawdown order (taxable → traditional → Roth) against a tax-smart order that fills the low brackets from the IRA first — on lifetime tax and portfolio longevity.
Planning
⚠️ Stress Test
A deterministic stress test (no Monte Carlo) that finds break-points in years and dollars. Move the levers — lower returns, higher spending, a market shock, longer life — to see when the plan breaks: base vs. stressed solvency.
🏦 Estate
Federal estate-tax projector with the 2026 exemption / sunset, annual-exclusion gifting, an optional state estate tax, and step-up in basis.
🎁 Charitable Bunching
Concentrating several years of giving into one (often via a donor-advised fund) to clear the standard-deduction hurdle, vs. giving the same total evenly — showing the extra tax benefit.
🧰 Tools
Small deterministic calculators: 72(t)/SEPP (penalty-free early IRA withdrawals), NUA (net unrealized appreciation on employer stock), QCD (qualified charitable distribution), Tiered AUM Fee (blended fee across breakpoints), and Backdoor Roth (with the pro-rata trap).
Reference
📊 Brackets
A reference map of the selected year's federal parameters — ordinary brackets, capital-gains thresholds, standard deduction, NIIT, SALT cap, CTC phaseout, SS wage base, and IRMAA — all from the planner's TAX table, plus a current-year state snapshot.
📄 Report
A one-page, printable observation report from Scenario A. Edit A's inputs on the Single-Year tab, then print or save it as a client handout.
A full written manual lives in the project's manuals/ folder. Every figure is a planning estimate — verify before filing. Not tax advice.