ATX Tax Planner

[Yardley CPA]

I make it a regular practice to provide my clients with tax planning for the following year.  I use the tax planner included with the ATX program.  Are any of you using a reasonably priced alternative that you find works better than the ATX Planner? 

[rfassett]

I also use the ATX planner - and pretty extensively in the fourth quarter of the year.  I have also used the CFS Tax Tools but found it did not give me anything that I did not have in ATX.  Now that could just be a function of my familiarity with ATX - and not a negative comment on CFS.  CFS puts out some great products - the planner just did not do anything for me

[Yardley CPA]

Have you found the ATX Planner to be accurate?  More often than not, I find the estimated tax ends up being much lower than the planner originally indicated, even after all the income and deductions are reasonably estimated. 

[rfassett]

No - I have not had that problem.  We use it probably about 300 times during the months of October, November and December and have found the estimates to be spot on.  Of course you have to watch things like credits that may or may not role over from the actual return to the next year planner and things of that sort.  The only time I have known the planner to miss is: it calculated a capital gain estimated tax when, because of the other income on the return being where it was, the capital gain rate should have been zero.  But then, I am still struck with awe when that happens myself.  Had a return this year that had 95,000 capital gains but paid zero tax.  There is something logically wrong with that.  But I digress......

[Richcpaman]

I use the ATX Tax planner as much as Ron does.  My request would be that the State estimated taxes be expanded so you could run better analysis there as well.  With the Decoupling from the fed depreciation rules, it makes it real hard to get the state accurate in future years.

Rich

[Jack from Ohio]

With all the political unrest and turbulence, I have refrained from trying to do any tax planning for my clients for 2017.  I have informed them all that I know 2 things for certain about taxes for 2017.

1. There will be tax law changes.

2. I have no idea or clue what will be changed or when it will be changed.

I then recommend that they write their congressman about taxes.

[Catherine]

Well, yes, @Jack from Ohio - but there are also times we need to plan *anyway*.  New baby, someone who expects their s-corp to do way better in 2017 (maybe they have a signed contract with payment schedule), maybe they inherited dad's mutual funds and know roughly how much more in dividends and interest to expect, get laid off mid-summer and severance package runs through end of September... and folks want to make sure they won't have a huge bill next April.  All we can do is our best, with caveats about changes to come.  But we still have to help with the planning.