Thanks to some last minute legislation, we are now getting details of what will be known as the Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. We are pleased to learn the bill includes permanence for items that have been previously “patched” with short-term provisions, like the AMT exclusion amount and estate tax laws. Not only does this make our development team’s life a little easier, it also removes one more element requiring speculation on the planners’ part about the future tax laws.
Michael Kitce’s blog, Nerd’s Eye View, has a great post on the new tax laws from a financial planning perspective: Financial Planning Implications of HR8 – the Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.
Money Tree has started the process of building the latest tax law changes into our financial planning software. Depending on which financial planning software you use, the changes will have varying impacts on your clients’ projections. Golden Years will be the most affected, as it includes full detailed tax calculations each year. Whichever program you use, an update to include income tax changes and estate tax changes will be available shortly. When new versions are available to download, we will notify our users here, and the program automatically prompt you upon opening the software.