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Show HN: Tax plan impact calculator
- bovermyer 9y agoThis is interesting, but how accurate is it?
- tvanantwerp 9y agoNot very.
- beager 9y agoAll the calculations seem to happen here: https://github.com/nick264/gop-tax-plan-calculator/blob/master/client/utils/calculator.js https://github.com/nick264/gop-tax-plan-calculator/blob/mast... Cannot speak to the soundness of the calculations, but there looks to be a ton of guesswork involved, and it does seem fairly simplified in light of the size of the bills being considered.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- carrben12 9y agoOn a dollar impact basis, there wasn’t much guesswork at all. What there was was a bunch of disparate contradictory sources online so we had to plow through that, given that reading through and internalizing the legislation (both old and new) was quite the bear. A number of folks have already made suggestions on github which is great (and appreciated). I wish we had documented every hard coded number with a source but we only started doing that at the very end of project when we were reconciling different sources. We plan on documenting everything going forward with a source.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- xyzzyz 9y agoIt doesn't seem to consider state tax in the calculations.
- ericcholis 9y agoItemized deductions
- ytNumbers 9y agohttps://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tax-calculators https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tax-calculators
- mlnhd 9y agoI think the Married Filing Joint standard deduction for 2018 would be $13,000 under the current Code. Your comparison shows it as $12,700.
- DownWithTaxes 9y agoThis has an intuitive interface and computes quickly. With 2 competing bills in the House and Senate that haven't yet been reconciled and formalized, a calculator like this is never going to be perfect, but at least we can begin to see the implications these proposals could have on our tax liability.
- maerF0x0 9y agoWould like it to consider IRA/401k contributions.
- matthjensen 9y agoIf this interests you, I would also recommend checking out http://open-source-economics.github.io/Tax-Calculator/ http://open-source-economics.github.io/Tax-Calculator/ and https://github.com/open-source-economics/tax-calculator https://github.com/open-source-economics/tax-calculator.
- gnicholas 9y agoIt would be more useful if they made it clear what has been factored in here. As is mentioned elsewhere, the bills have to be reconciled, and there are significant variables remaining. The SALT deduction is still up in the air, as are the details around mortgage interest. For people in some states, these two details could swing things between saving thousands and paying thousands extra. edit: should have included property tax, which is more of an issue than mortgage interest for existing homeowners.
- carrben12 9y agoSorry about that. We need to add more info. The code is available on github. The latest info we could get our hands on. 10k cap on property tax deduction in both house and senate bill and no state income tax deduction in either. No change to mortgage deduction as current mortgages are grandfathered in under both plans.
- kaosjester 9y agoThis doesn't account for the whole picture. The tax benefit is dwarfed in comparison to the losses in social security people at and below the poverty line will suffer.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoI’m assuming you mean “social safety net”, not Social Security? And are you just referring to the individual mandate change? Or are other big parts of the safety net changing from this bill? (And yes, I understand the long-term policy and political implications, but I’m asking about specific immediate changes in this bill)
- toomuchtodo 9y agoRepublicans have stated they will be cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits after the tax cuts have passed “as they’re no longer affordable.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop-eyes-post-tax-cut-changes-to-welfare-medicare-and-social-security/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/...
- Joeri 9y agoIf the health care costs in the U.S. were the same as the next most expensive OECD country, health care costs would be $1 trillion less. The trump tax cuts amount to $150 billion a year, so just by bringing health care costs in line with the second-most expensive country they could probably meet all of the shortfall without anyone needing to lose anything. It's possible to make smart cuts to medicare and medicaid spending without affecting quality of care or coverage. Now, knowing republicans that's not how it will pan out though. They aren't known for making smart cuts, they typically reduce benefits/expenditure while keeping profiteering in place.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ghufran_syed 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- RyanShook 9y agoVery nice tool. Added to PH: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/taxulator https://www.producthunt.com/posts/taxulator
- aleyan 9y agoMay I recommend http://taxplancalculator.com/ http://taxplancalculator.com/ ? It takes in to account state taxes, which potentially can make a difference between a tax cut and a tax hike. It also shows you an estimate of your federal taxes under the current laws, so that you can ascertain its precision against last years returns. Its author, Maxim Lott, is a journalist and has been tweaking the calculations over the past couple of weeks reflecting the latest changes in the bills. You may have seen his predictive markets analysis site [1] in the run up to 2016 US Presidential Election. As a matter of disclosure, the author is a friend and I helped him debug a couple of small issues. [1] https://www.electionbettingodds.com/ https://www.electionbettingodds.com/
- doughj3 9y agoThe linked site (taxulator) also takes state taxes into account if you select "itemized" deductions.
- pianom4n 9y agoThe AMT calculation is hard to use. It also doesn't include the Senate's AMT change at all. It doesn't seem to include PEP or Pease.
- ahh 9y ago> It takes in to account state taxes Wildly incorrectly. I live in WA and it overestimates my sales tax deduction by a factor of ten.
- dahdum 9y agoNo matter what income I put for California, it always says: "No impact from end of state and local deductions" Same at $30k, $300k, and $1M. I don't think it's accounting for SALT at all.
- gok 9y agoYou need to check the itemized deduction box
- 9y ago
- Donald 9y agoCouldn't you determine my state income taxes from a state dropdown? Local could still be an addition for more nuanced municipalities.
- intopieces 9y agoI thought SALT and Student Loan deductions were eliminated? They're still listed here. Am I missing something?
- zrail 9y agoThe Senate and House plans do different things with these deductions (house eliminates, senate curtails) and it's not at all clear what will come out of conference.
- scroot 9y agoThis only tells me what would happen next year. What about 5, 7, 10 years out?
- carrben12 9y agoWorking on it ;)
- pianom4n 9y agoThis doesn't include Pease, which makes quite a difference. I don't believe the AMT exemptions you're using are correct (although they are widely reported). The bill updates the "original" AMT amounts from 2012, which need to be inflation adjusted. I made these accurate graphs that include everything. They also compute your state taxes for you. Senate: https://jsfiddle.net/4ec6eLz5/ https://jsfiddle.net/4ec6eLz5/ House: https://jsfiddle.net/bsjryfLo/ https://jsfiddle.net/bsjryfLo/
- carrben12 9y agoThank you for feedback! Indeed we didn’t include Pease, and we will look to add that shortly. Re AMT, When I read the bill my interpretation was that the new levels were the correct numbers for 2018 and increase from there. I’m certainly not a lawyer and relied on other ‘widely reported’ interpretations. Given how many reported things turned out to be at least moderately innacureatr when we did fact check them, it would not surprise me if you are right. I really like your site and the graphs. The fixed property tax deduction seems like a limitation (I personally pay close to 2x your NY rate and have some friends who pay more) but it certainly does some things that we don’t, Pease included. Had I found your site a week ago we likely would have had to build our own! We made our code available on GitHub so by all means feel free to contribute and improve it if you like!
- pianom4n 9y agoYou're right about the AMT. I misread the bill the first time. This means the "40%" figure being thrown around is off, it's only a 30% reduction
- ixacto 9y agoEliminating state and local taxes was a long time coming. Why should the no-tax states subsidize the bloated bureaucracy of CA/NY? It would be quite amazing if CA got rid of state income taxes though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pkaye 9y agoIf anything, CA/NY subsidize many of the other states.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jdavis703 9y agoThis tends to be a widely held misconception. It turns out that CA and NY pay more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal funds. It turns out that it's mostly the low tax states that take in more from the federal government than they pay. Here's one chart: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...
- usaar333 9y agoWell, sure - but CA and NY also have very high income levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per... We have a progressive tax system, so rich states should be paying more than they receive in federal funds. The more relevant question is how do the Atlantic's charts look once you correct for income levels? Given that CA's returns are barely less than 1, I suspect that CA is in a situation where the tax deduction is effectively allowing the federal government to subsidize the state.
- jdavis703 9y agoSure, but we're supposed to be creating a tax cut, not a tax hike. If you want to raise taxes to either reduce the deficit or create new government services that's fine by me. But instead this tax cut will go to cutting the taxes of the wealthy and increase the budget deficit. This will be paid for by states like NY and CA and won't help the tax system become more progressive.
- brnd4n 9y agoI'll add the calculator I built: https://www.republicantaxcalculator.com https://www.republicantaxcalculator.com. It takes into account state and property tax deductions as well as some of the other major changes. Github here: https://github.com/BrendanAndrade/taxplan https://github.com/BrendanAndrade/taxplan
- eranation 9y agoStupid question: in all of those calculators, I never know if I should include my personal income or household income (including my spouse). Is it an obvious thing that everyone knows? as it's never in the (?) tooltip... in any calculator I found online (I'm an expat, so perhaps I just don't get the obvious)
- gnicholas 9y agoIf you file jointly as a married couple, you would include both. But if your spouse is a not a US taxpayer, then you'e likely not filing jointly. In that case, only your income would apply. But take any of these with a huge grain of salt, because expats have very different rules to play by, including some generous exemptions.
- hartator 9y agoExpats have generous exemptions?
- tvanantwerp 9y agoCurrently US expats can exclude up to $102,100 of foreign earned income. However, you're still required to file US taxes if you're a US citizen. Doesn't matter if you were born overseas to American parents and have never been to America; still gotta file. The US is weird like that.
- hartator 9y agoOh, I thought you meant EU expats in the US.
- gnicholas 9y agoAh, I see the misunderstanding. Although I would note that if you are not a citizen or permanent resident, then I believe your foreign-source income is not subject to US tax. So for example if you had a home in another country that you rented out, that wouldn't be taxable in the US even though it would be for a similarly-situated US citizen.
- DoodleBuggy 9y agoInteresting, but it really needs to include state taxes to be accurate or relevant.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tvanantwerp 9y agoDoesn't have business income or capital gains, which is pretty important to have considering the contents of the GOP plan. The pass-through rates in the bills will have a big effect on small business owners. Edit: The more I play with this, the more flaws I find. I work at a tax policy think tank and I've been involved with more than a few tax calculators, and this one isn't reliable. It fails basic tests, like applying the standard deduction if itemized deductions are less than that amount. Second edit: Here's a tip. It's a lot easier to calculate marginal rates on income if you go through the brackets backward rather than forward. That way, you just check if income is >= the current bracket threshold. If yes, subtract threshold from income, add that multiplied by the rate to the running total of taxes owed, and move to the next bracket. Else, just move to the next bracket. Way easier than what you're doing.
- woolvalley 9y agoWhere is a good tax calculator then?
- carrben12 9y agoThanks for feedback. We will add the itemized v standard deduction minimizer soon. We thought we’d let user direct but I agree we should take the min and change that. Re tax brackets, we are looking to add state tax soon so it is much easier not to hardcore the running totals. The computation time is insignificant but code is cleaner with our current method, IMO.
- Redoubts 9y ago> It fails basic tests, like applying the standard deduction if itemized deductions are less than that amount. Yeah, this is the difference between the calculator showing a $2K tax hike for me, and a $2K cut.
- brockwhittaker 9y agoThis doesn't account for SALT deductions it seems, which is a huge reason why instead of my bill going down by 10% or so, it goes up about 5%.
- drstewart 9y agoMaybe I'm just daft, but this tool is a bit confusing at first because I didn't realize it wasn't comparing the difference between itemizing now and taking the standard deduction under the new plan (and there isn't a way to do that without manually crunching the numbers). Or better said, it doesn't pick your best deduction under each plan like you would if you were actually filing taxes.
- chrisp_dc 9y agoI think this calculator is counting "State/Local Income Taxes" as a credit instead of a deduction. Input a salary of $60,000 and a $6300 deduction into "State/Local Income Taxes". $6300 was the single filer standard deduction amount from 2016. It shows different outputs when toggling between itemized and standard deduction.
- EarthIsHome 9y agoFeature request: choose a tax year
- pazimzadeh 9y agoThere should be a checkbox for whether you are a graduate student or not.
- ddebernardy 9y agoIs this calculator accurate? It seems everyone no matter the income seems to benefit somehow. Or is it that Trump, like Reagan, is about to grow the US debt by untold amounts?
- adventured 9y agoI'm not sure what the point of the Reagan debt reference is, Obama's eight years by far holds the record for the greatest public debt accumulation in US history, and that was accomplished just through sheer spending irresponsibility. The US is heading toward trillion dollar deficits no matter. There's absolutely nothing that can stop that, unless someone wants to dramatically slash entitlements - which is never going to happen. You can't raise taxes on the rich enough to find $1 trillion in new revenue. To plug the hole with tax revenue, it'll be necessary to dramatically raise taxes on everyone in the top 50% income wise, matching what other advanced welfare states do in taxing the middle class a lot more by necessity to pay for entitlements. The annual tax cut cost is going to be about $150 billion per year, roughly $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, assuming mediocre revenue gains from it. The eight Obama years added about $9 trillion in new public debt, and the US got absolutely nothing from that vast fiscal destruction (other than further eroded infrastructure, a mostly horrible healthcare plan, a trillion dollars in new student debt, zero gain in the median American net worth figure, and the greatest wealth gains in US history by the rich). You can't actually think $150 billion per year matters any longer. It's dramatically beyond game over for the US fiscally. Nobody even dares to bring up the idea of paying down the debt now. It's the Japan debt scenario full steam ahead, $30 trillion in public debt by 2027 no matter what happens. That means permanently low Fed rates, because the US will never be able to afford the interest on $30+ trillion otherwise. I'll take the 20% corporate income tax rate in exchange for the $150 billion per year cost (plus the big jump in the standard deduction); the $150 billion thrown onto the burning fiscal picture that started with the Bush years, got dramatically worse with the Obama years, and is going to continue through the Trump years, is simply meaningless at this point.
- jrs95 9y agoRyan actually just announced entitlement reform is something they're going to attempt in 2018. It seems like it would be very difficult, but there is some chance that those will have substantial long term cuts. As for the Reagan reference in the parent comment, that's sort of a common comparison to criticize Republican tax (and often defense) policy since the 80s. There is somewhat of a common trend of cutting taxes far more than spending and increasing military expenditures simultaneously. Bush was a much worse offender here though, with Iraq and Afghanistan.
- njarboe 9y agoAs the tax plan has not yet been finalized, I'm not sure what the use of this calculator is. You don't really know what your new taxes will be yet. I would wait until it is reconciled and signed to worry about that. YMMV. If you want to influence the outcome of what is in the tax bill, then finding the thing in it that you don't like the most (and preferably it is in only in one of the bills) and advocating for that to be removed or changed is probably the most useful. Academia was up in arms about losing its special tax break on tuitions (only in House bill), got a bunch of press, and it looks like that might be left out in reconciliation.
- dwg 9y agoEven though the bills are not finalized I think people would like to have an idea of what changes they may be facing, and it also benefits people who like to get informed before debating the issue with others.
- rcollyer 9y agoThe personal exemption is incorrect. It doesn't add the children into the total (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf), but you can enter it by hand. Also, Student Loan Interest is an above the line deduction (line 33 on 1040), i.e. you can deduct it regardless of whether or not you itemize.
- mbil 9y agoIt would be cool if the govt had to develop an open-source tax estimator whenever tax-change bills were introduced (or make modifications to some base tool). An iteration of a tax bill would be presented alongside the tax-estimator tool so that citizens and businesses could run real numbers through the hypothetical tax-changes.
- carrben12 9y agoTotally agree. And it could also show net impact to the deficit/surplus (yeah, right) across the whole population given the gov had all that data. Would be awesome.
- moh853 9y agoThis does not account for the massive increase in taxes that graduate students would have in the house plan. In the house plan tuition waivers of graduate students will become taxable and push them further down the poverty line.
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- pascalxus 9y agoi got different results between this calulator and the flu.io one. this one seems to appear much more favorable.
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- Havelock 9y agoIt is nice, could do with some better support for smaller screens. I enjoyed that the authors names shifted position when updating the page. Nice touch.
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- thebigspacefuck 9y agoI have my 2016 tax return pulled up and filled everything out. It looks like I'll pay a few hundred more due to the State and Local tax deductions being removed. :\ Every calculator on here gives a different result though.
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- dwg 9y agoLooking really good! I recently started working on something similar: http://politisee.com http://politisee.com, with a little different goal. Rather than calculate the net result for a single person, Politisee for a single person, Politisee tries to summarize and compare plans, and shed light on how they perform broadly to society (i.e. at all income levels). However I do plan to add the personal side too. For now I'll be linking to yours. One of the challenges of the broad approach is getting everything into an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm definitely going to be taking some inspiration from your work.