Interactive, income tax bracket calculator / visualizations that I made

[CCCA]

I've made a few money/finance/FI related calculators and visualizations and I made a couple tax related ones recently that I thought I'd share.  I think people here might enjoy playing with the calculators as interactivity and visuals can help you understand tax rates even if you already understand them mathematically.

The first is a sankey diagram of federal income tax (it doesn't include payroll taxes or state and local taxes):

Just choose your filing status and enter your income both regular and capital gainsidends and it'll distribute your income into different tax brackets where you can see how much is taxed vs kept.  You can hover over the various links to get more information.  If you make alot of income, the graph gets really big so watch out.

The 2nd calculator is a more holistic view of taxes across all incomes.  It attempts to also show the fraction of income in each of the tax brackets. Basically you can hover (or click on mobile) on the graph to move the vertical dashed line to a specific income level (shown at the bottom).  THat line then cuts across a bunch of different tax brackets, i.e. "bands" (regular and capital gains).  The amount of the line in each tax band is the amount of your income subject to that tax rate. This one seems maybe a little more confusing to people that I've shared it with.





One of the things to look at is the fraction of income coming from capital gains vs regular income (via the slider on top).  If you can shift your income to be mostly from capital gains, you can reduce your tax rate significantly.



I hope you find this interesting and maybe helpful. Feel free to share it to whoever and as always, I appreciate any feedback, suggestions etc. . . for making it clearer, better, more useful.

**sorry for clogging up for forum with duplicate posts**.  The forum seemed to be frozen for me so I tried posting several times and eventually they all went through.

[shingy]

I'm surprised that I'm the first to reply! Very cool stuff, CCCA. Thanks for sharing.

[CCCA]

I'm surprised that I'm the first to reply! Very cool stuff, CCCA. Thanks for sharing.

It is a little quiet in this section of the forum, maybe I should have shared it in the welcome forum. Oh well. thanks for thanking!

[Curmudgeon]

Very nice, thank you for sharing this!

[BlueHouse]

As usual, your visualizations are excellent. 
I just paid another visit to your site and found the Market Timing game.  How did I miss that before?  Is it new?  It's wonderful.  I can't wait to share that!

[Livingthedream55]

I really appreciate this!  Fantastic tool for estimating taxes in FIRE. 

[Hvillian]

@CCCA   Congrats - you are famous.  This has been picked up and shared by quite a few outlets.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-americans-make-spend-money/

[CCCA]

@CCCA   Congrats - you are famous.  This has been picked up and shared by quite a few outlets.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-americans-make-spend-money/

Hi Hvillian,
thanks, yes, I saw that.  It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who gets something out of this.  The data viz stuff is fun and keeping me busy in semi-RE.  It's a nice creative outlet for me (creative for a techie like myself, anyway).

[Lindyhopper]

TY, the sankey graph as very helpful.

[fatcow240]

Very cool visualizations.


I wanted to look at $12k income and $30k Capital Gain Income.


https://engaging-data.com/tax-brackets/?fs=1&reg=12000&cg=30000


The graphic doesn't look right.  The numbers come out correctly, but the Capital Gain isn't shown in Standard Deduction or Capital Gains part of the graphic.  The issue appears to be if the regular income is below the standard deduction.

[SunshineAZ]

Just a comment to say thank you for your work.  I love the visual aspect of your charts and graphs and it makes it easier to explain to the  math challenged people.  :)  This new one is great, it helps visualize the "income tax buckets" concept. 

[CCCA]

Very cool visualizations.


I wanted to look at $12k income and $30k Capital Gain Income.


https://engaging-data.com/tax-brackets/?fs=1&reg=12000&cg=30000


The graphic doesn't look right.  The numbers come out correctly, but the Capital Gain isn't shown in Standard Deduction or Capital Gains part of the graphic.  The issue appears to be if the regular income is below the standard deduction.

Hi,
You found a bug! So I just fixed it and now I think it'll work properly. Yes, part of the capital gains that should have gone to the standard deduction wasn't making it there.  Thanks for pointing that out.

[CCCA]

Just a comment to say thank you for your work.  I love the visual aspect of your charts and graphs and it makes it easier to explain to the  math challenged people.  :)  This new one is great, it helps visualize the "income tax buckets" concept.

thanks, I appreciate the kind words.

[fatcow240]

...I just fixed it and now I think it'll work properly...

Thanks for the quick fix.  Again, really useful visualization.  I feel that when I start talking LTCG and tax brackets, eyes glaze over.  Now I can just show a few charts.

[BabyShark]

ugh these are so cool

[pmac]

amazing graph.

Is there anyway to see add FICA/Self Employment Tax? Would love to see how much people spend on those taxes.

The Capital Gains rates looks even better when you don't have to pay FICA on them.

Thanks for the great tool @CCCA

[CarolinaGirl]

Quite interesting!  Thanks!

[ender]

Would be cool to put deductions in there but it's a bit more complicated than the purpose I think :)

[CCCA]

I made another tax visualization though this one is about how much each state pays in taxes:
https://engaging-data.com/taxes-state/


Lots of info can be visualized by state:

• Mean Federal Tax Paid
• Mean Adjusted Gross Income
• Mean State/Local Tax
• Mean Combined (Fed/State/Local) Tax
• Percent Income from Dividends and Capital Gains
• Percent of Returns with Itemized Deductions
• Number of Tax Returns
• Mean Federal Tax Rate
• Mean State/Local Tax Rate
• Mean Combined (Fed/State/Local) Rate
• Total Federal Tax Liability

Would be cool to put deductions in there but it's a bit more complicated than the purpose I think :)

I'm trying to figure out the best way to do deductions, probably a simple one where you can just enter your total deductions, not individual ones since I don't really want to get into calculating all of the phaseouts, etc. . .

amazing graph.

Is there anyway to see add FICA/Self Employment Tax? Would love to see how much people spend on those taxes.

The Capital Gains rates looks even better when you don't have to pay FICA on them.

Thanks for the great tool @CCCA

This is a good idea and I have this on my list of things to do. 


thanks!

[Hvillian]

I made another tax visualization though this one is about how much each state pays in taxes:
https://engaging-data.com/taxes-state/

Interesting and easy to understand, although I've come to expect a wider color palette out of you. ;)
I especially like the "Federal Tax Paid Per Electoral Vote."

[Goldielocks]

Amazing.

I never realized how large Australia really is, relative to USA and Canada.   I always thought it was up to half the size of the US and it is not.. it is nearly 80% the size of the USA in land area.  (Yeah, I spent some time on your site).

The market timing graph -- the top of the market one, really is powerful to remind us to keep the money in there.  I gotta do that and I alway hold back because that cash is my "for a dip)!  Duh.  There it (the market) goes up again.

[DavidAnnArbor]

Wow loved the market timing game.

https://engaging-data.com/market-timing-game/

[CCCA]

The 2020 tax brackets have been released by the IRS, so I've updated the calculator to include them.

[BicycleB]

@CCCA, I just noticed this thread. HOLY CRAP, THESE VISUALIZATIONS ARE AWESOME!

Wow. Terrific work. I had wished something like that was around. And now it is. What a wonderful world.

[CCCA]

@CCCA, I just noticed this thread. HOLY CRAP, THESE VISUALIZATIONS ARE AWESOME!

Wow. Terrific work. I had wished something like that was around. And now it is. What a wonderful world.

Hi @BicycleB,


thanks you.  It's always nice when your hard work gets appreciated and is useful for other folks. 

[CCCA]

Hi all, I've updated the tax calculator to include 2021 tax brackets. They the bracket thresholds only changed slightly so no major changes here.

[simonsez]

Hi all, I've updated the tax calculator to include 2021 tax brackets. They the bracket thresholds only changed slightly so no major changes here.

Thanks!  Always appreciate your work!  I have shown so many people the rich, broke, or dead.  My favorite feature is to toggle the dead proportion on/off.  I'm fairly conservative when it comes to thinking about SWR but that is always morbidly refreshing that there is more to life than reducing the size of the red to zero.

[SwordGuy]

I've made a few money/finance/FI related calculators and visualizations and I made a couple tax related ones recently that I thought I'd share.  I think people here might enjoy playing with the calculators as interactivity and visuals can help you understand tax rates even if you already understand them mathematically.

The first is a sankey diagram of federal income tax (it doesn't include payroll taxes or state and local taxes):

Just choose your filing status and enter your income both regular and capital gainsidends and it'll distribute your income into different tax brackets where you can see how much is taxed vs kept.  You can hover over the various links to get more information.  If you make alot of income, the graph gets really big so watch out.

The 2nd calculator is a more holistic view of taxes across all incomes.  It attempts to also show the fraction of income in each of the tax brackets. Basically you can hover (or click on mobile) on the graph to move the vertical dashed line to a specific income level (shown at the bottom).  THat line then cuts across a bunch of different tax brackets, i.e. "bands" (regular and capital gains).  The amount of the line in each tax band is the amount of your income subject to that tax rate. This one seems maybe a little more confusing to people that I've shared it with.





One of the things to look at is the fraction of income coming from capital gains vs regular income (via the slider on top).  If you can shift your income to be mostly from capital gains, you can reduce your tax rate significantly.



I hope you find this interesting and maybe helpful. Feel free to share it to whoever and as always, I appreciate any feedback, suggestions etc. . . for making it clearer, better, more useful.

**sorry for clogging up for forum with duplicate posts**.  The forum seemed to be frozen for me so I tried posting several times and eventually they all went through.

@CCCA ,

I looked at this.   It's interesting and useful to many, but I'm not sure how useful it is to me.   
(Thanks for doing it though!)

We're FIRED and have between $0 and $3,000 in W2 income, depending upon whether we amused ourselves with doing something that paid us.   We have 401K/IRA RMDs, occasionally have capital gains, and we have rental houses and farm income.   

Are 401K/IRA withdrawals are taxed the same as W2 income when it comes to Social Security and Medicare?
Rentals have depreciation to offset rental income.    I really don't know whether anything is different for the sharecropped farmland taxwise or not.

[Abe]

Thanks again, you do great work. I like your visualizations and show them to my friends when explaining finances to them.

[CCCA]

Hi all, I've updated the tax calculator to include 2021 tax brackets. They the bracket thresholds only changed slightly so no major changes here.

Thanks!  Always appreciate your work!  I have shown so many people the rich, broke, or dead.  My favorite feature is to toggle the dead proportion on/off.  I'm fairly conservative when it comes to thinking about SWR but that is always morbidly refreshing that there is more to life than reducing the size of the red to zero.

Thanks again, you do great work. I like your visualizations and show them to my friends when explaining finances to them.

Thank you both. Appreciate the kind words and glad that it's helpful to you and others.

We're FIRED and have between $0 and $3,000 in W2 income, depending upon whether we amused ourselves with doing something that paid us.   We have 401K/IRA RMDs, occasionally have capital gains, and we have rental houses and farm income.   

Are 401K/IRA withdrawals are taxed the same as W2 income when it comes to Social Security and Medicare?
Rentals have depreciation to offset rental income.    I really don't know whether anything is different for the sharecropped farmland taxwise or not.

401k/IRA withdrawals are see federal income taxes just as regular W2 income, but aren't subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

[SwordGuy]

We're FIRED and have between $0 and $3,000 in W2 income, depending upon whether we amused ourselves with doing something that paid us.   We have 401K/IRA RMDs, occasionally have capital gains, and we have rental houses and farm income.   

Are 401K/IRA withdrawals are taxed the same as W2 income when it comes to Social Security and Medicare?
Rentals have depreciation to offset rental income.    I really don't know whether anything is different for the sharecropped farmland taxwise or not.

401k/IRA withdrawals are see federal income taxes just as regular W2 income, but aren't subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

Thanks!   Same with rental income (except for depreciation), right?

[CCCA]

We're FIRED and have between $0 and $3,000 in W2 income, depending upon whether we amused ourselves with doing something that paid us.   We have 401K/IRA RMDs, occasionally have capital gains, and we have rental houses and farm income.   

Are 401K/IRA withdrawals are taxed the same as W2 income when it comes to Social Security and Medicare?
Rentals have depreciation to offset rental income.    I really don't know whether anything is different for the sharecropped farmland taxwise or not.

401k/IRA withdrawals are see federal income taxes just as regular W2 income, but aren't subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

Thanks!   Same with rental income (except for depreciation), right?

You are welcome. Yes, net rental income is also taxed as regular income, and not subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

[SwordGuy]

We're FIRED and have between $0 and $3,000 in W2 income, depending upon whether we amused ourselves with doing something that paid us.   We have 401K/IRA RMDs, occasionally have capital gains, and we have rental houses and farm income.   

Are 401K/IRA withdrawals are taxed the same as W2 income when it comes to Social Security and Medicare?
Rentals have depreciation to offset rental income.    I really don't know whether anything is different for the sharecropped farmland taxwise or not.

401k/IRA withdrawals are see federal income taxes just as regular W2 income, but aren't subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

Thanks!   Same with rental income (except for depreciation), right?

You are welcome. Yes, net rental income is also taxed as regular income, and not subject to SS/Medicare taxes.

Thanks again.   I know there are some funky rules about social security and what counts or not.    It's a big chunk of our retirement income.