Show HN: I made a better Tax Estimator from my spreadsheet

by matthewtseon 4/23/2024, 12:27 PMwith 0 comments

Hey All,

I left my software career 2 months ago to write code that actually excites me. Ironically, the first thing I'm building is a tax tool.

A few years ago, I had a surprise 5-figure tax bill + penalties. Apparently the IRS withholds incorrectly even for simple wage income (becomes more of a problem for high earners). So I made a spreadsheet to estimate my taxes, and it got better and better over the years.

The spreadsheet worked, but without code it couldn't handle certain edge cases. And a lot of friends & coworkers mentioned they have the same tax issue. So I decided to make a web app out of it.

I think it's better than what's out there for a few reasons:

- You can quickly add your income sources and get immediate cumulative calculations-people often give up before making it to the end of the IRS or Turbotax estimators.

- There's a slider bar which tells you tax owed at any point in the year-great for quarterly payments because you won't need to go through the estimation process 4 separate times.

- You can click on each tax type to show a detailed breakdown of the calculation—I hate how existing tools just give you a number without explanation.

- You can save your tax estimate and update it later. People usually have taxable events throughout the year, and it's nice to quickly update the estimate rather than create a new one from scratch.

Tech Stack: Next.js, Supabase, Makerkit, Tailwind, Shadcn/ui, Echarts

I hope people find it as useful as I do, looking forward to any feedback!

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