Income Tax Plannerv2.5

⚠ This tool is not guaranteed to be accurate. Use at your own risk.

Change Log

v2.5

NIIT threshold line is now always shown, including years with no capital gain, since it is a MAGI level to plan around rather than a line that only matters once you sell. Removed the OBBBA switch and the SALT Cap switch: OBBBA is current law, so both provisions are always applied and now expire only by tax year. The summary in the lower left says, for the selected year, whether the OBBBA SALT cap and the senior deduction still apply or have expired.

v2.4

NIIT threshold line now marks where MAGI crosses $250k/$200k, so it moves with Social Security and capital gains instead of sitting on the $250k ordinary-income mark. NIIT dollars are now charted: new Federal NIIT bar, and NIIT is included in Total Tax and the effective rates (it was missing entirely). Social Security slider now reaches $130k for Married/Joint and $70k for Single. New Ordinary income slider and entry box below the chart move the pinned income without clicking the chart; the box takes an exact dollar amount.

v2.3

Added clear Net Income. Break out CG and Federal rate.

v2.2

Added 13 states: AL, AZ, CO, IN, KY, MA, ME, MN, MT, ND, OH, SC, WI. 36 states covered total (including 9 no-income-tax states).

What questions does this answer?

A · Marginal sensitivity

How does my total tax burden change as income shifts? Zoom in on your income range for fine-grained detail — the chart step size shrinks automatically. Cliffs, humps, and flat regions are all visible at a glance.

B · Sweet spots & danger zones

Where are the SS torpedo, IRMAA tier crossings, and NIIT threshold? The vertical reference lines and marginal rate curves (purple and yellow dashed) make them immediately visible.

C · True all-in effective rate

Federal + state + IRMAA combined, not just the marginal bracket. The white line on the Tax Rates view is the number that actually matters for planning.

D · What the tax is at a given income

Hover over your expected income on the chart. The info panel below shows every component — rates and dollars — simultaneously at that income level. Pin a column and Open in Tax Planner hands that income and the tax computed here to the Tax Payment Planner, which decides when to draw and when to pay it. This page computes the tax; that one schedules it.

E · Filing status changes

Switch the Filing Status control between MFJ and Single to see how marriage or becoming single shifts your brackets, standard deduction, IRMAA tiers, and effective rates — at every income level simultaneously.

F · State changes

Select a different state to instantly see how a move reshapes your all-in effective rate. States with no income tax, flat taxes, and progressive brackets all produce visibly different curves.

G · Aging and future-year projections

Increment your age to see how turning 65 (Medicare, IRMAA) or 73 (RMDs) affects the picture. Change the year to model the same income in the future — OBBBA senior deduction and SALT cap provisions sunset at different years, so you can see the tax landscape before and after those cliffs.

How the income sweep works

The x-axis sweeps ordinary income across the visible range (default $30k–$620k; the View slider can extend it up to $1.1M). Ordinary income covers wages, IRA/401k withdrawals, pensions, and RMDs — anything taxed at regular rates. Social Security and capital gains are entered as fixed amounts that apply at every point across the sweep, letting you see how they interact with the income ramp. The top x-axis shows the total income (ordinary + SS + CG gain) at each corresponding point.

The step size between data points and the x-axis label spacing both adapt automatically to the visible range — zoom into a narrower window and you get finer granularity with denser labels.

Chart controls

• Tax Rates / Tax Dollars — toggles the chart between rate lines (effective + marginal) and dollar-amount stacked bars.
• Legend items — click any entry in the legend to toggle that line or bar series on/off. Useful for hiding distracting lines (e.g. IRMAA tiers you don't need).
• Click a column — pins that income level so the info panel stays visible. With AutoZoom on, clicking also centers and zooms the chart around that income level, adjusting the label step size automatically.
• AutoZoom button — when active (teal), clicking a column auto-zooms to a window around that income. Toggle it off to pin without zooming.
• Full button — resets the view back to the full $0–$1.1M range.
• View slider (below the chart) — drag either handle to set the lower or upper bound of the visible income range directly. The chart redraws and label spacing adapts immediately. The slider and AutoZoom/Full buttons all stay in sync.
• Ordinary slider and entry box (below the View slider) — move the pinned income without clicking the chart. The slider scrubs across the visible range in chart steps and never re-zooms, so you can sweep the pin while watching the info panel. The entry box takes an exact dollar amount for fine tuning, and its readout is computed at that exact income even when it falls between two chart columns. Type an amount outside the current view and the chart re-centers on it. The ✕ button unpins.

The chart

• Tax Rates view — federal effective (blue), state effective (orange), total effective (white), federal marginal on ordinary income + CG (purple dashed), and state marginal (yellow dashed).
• Tax Dollars view — stacked bars for Federal Ordinary, Federal CG, Federal NIIT, IRMAA, State Ordinary, and State CG. The teal line (right axis) is your MAGI — the figure used to determine next year's IRMAA tier.
• NIIT line (indigo dashed) — sits where MAGI crosses the NIIT threshold, which is left of the $250k ordinary-income mark whenever you have taxable Social Security or capital gains. It is always shown, whether or not you have a gain this year, because it is the MAGI level to stay under: once you are past it, any gain you do realize is surtaxed from the first dollar.
• Info panel — hovering over the chart shows all rates and dollar amounts for that income level simultaneously, regardless of which view is active.
• IRMAA tier lines — click any IRMAA entry in the legend (Tax Dollars view) to toggle its vertical reference line.
• Top axis — shows total income (ordinary + SS + CG) at each major ordinary income mark. When SS and CG are zero it matches the bottom axis.

Share button

The Share button encodes all current settings into the URL and copies it to your clipboard. Paste it into any browser — or save it as a bookmark — to restore the exact same configuration. Works from a local file (file://) as well as a web server.

Simplifications

• IRMAA lookback: Medicare IRMAA uses your MAGI from two years prior. This tool applies it to current-year MAGI — convenient for planning but optimistic by about two years if you've recently had a high-income year.
• OBBBA provisions (P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025) are always applied; there is no switch, because they are current law. Each one turns itself off by tax year: the $6,000/person senior deduction applies through 2028 and phases out 6¢/$1 above $150k/$75k AGI; the $40,000 SALT cap phases down 30¢/$1 above $500k MAGI and reverts to $10k in 2030. All parameters are sourced from TAXData.OBBBA. The statute escalates both the SALT cap and its $500k phase-out threshold by 1%/yr from 2025 through 2029; this tool holds them at the 2025 amounts, so it understates the cap by about $400 in 2026 rising to roughly $1,600 by 2029.
• SS provisional income thresholds ($32k/$44k MFJ, $25k/$34k Single) are intentionally not inflation-adjusted — that is current law, and the reason the SS torpedo worsens over time.
• NIIT threshold ($250k MFJ / $200k Single) is also not inflation-indexed — another orphan in the tax code, unchanged since 2013. It is tested against MAGI, not ordinary income, so the chart's NIIT line is placed where the swept MAGI crosses it. The surtax applies to the lesser of net investment income and the amount by which MAGI exceeds the threshold; on this page net investment income is the capital gain only.
• Excluded: AMT, self-employment tax, qualified dividends (modeled as CG), muni bond interest.

State-specific notes