Hugh's Mortgage and Financial Calculators - Tax Tools


  • Taxable Social Security Benefits. This calculator turns the convoluted worksheet in IRS Publication 915 into a simple web form where you enter two numbers and your filing status. It leaves out possible adjustments, but gives a quick and easy number for your taxable social security benefits for 98% of filers.

  • Proposition A Sales Tax Calculator. St. Louis County put a 1/2 cent sales tax on the April 2010 ballot to support public transportation in the city and county which luckily passed.. I have written a calculator to show people how much it will cost them compared to how much money they give MODOT each year for the roads and streets via the gasoline tax.

  • HELOC Cost Calculator Another idea sent to me to calculate how much you "save" in taxes by paying tons of interest to some financial institution while watching the debt dependent on your home equity grow without end. The e-mailer told me some folks use their HELOC's like credit cards, throwing just about anything on it under the guise of "tax savings". No wonder our country is so debt crazy! Used correctly, HELOC's can be great borrowing products; used poorly they just put you more in debt.
  • Mortgage Deductibility after the tax cut - Wow, with these low rate loan you can save a ton of interest. And it is all deductible, right? Well, theoretically that is true, but the actual tax savings is based on your total itemized deductions over the standard deduction. Now that the standard deduction has become quite large (due to new tax cut) you may be surprised to see how little if any income tax you are really saving from your mortgage interest. I just calculated mine out and I will not save from itemizing for the first time since the year we bought our first house.
  • Estate Tax Calculator Updated! Estimate your total taxable estate and how much estate tax you would pay! Updated to reflect new tax "cut" bill. The estate tax is now a very funny little creature indeed. Die before 2011 or you lose!
  • Calculate your AMT Tax (Alternative Minimum Tax!). With too many exemptions you may have to recalculate your income tax!
  • Minimum IRA Distribution Comparison Updated!. I changed this to follow new IRS laws that require your IRA custodian (brokerage, fund family etc) to withdraw a specific minimum as specified by IRS law. This makes this whole "minimum withdrawal" effort much less complicated.
  • Minimum Required Distributions - A reader wanted to see a chart for distributions from an inherited IRA, which is slightly different than if the beneficiary is a spouse. Note that an inherited Roth IRA distributions are tax-free if the IRA was held for five years.
  • Penalty-free IRA withdrawals before 59 1/2 - Did you realize there is a special IRS rule that let's you make regular withdrawals before 59 1/2 without paying the 10% penalty? You must make "substantially equal" withdrawals over a minimum 5 year period. I did have my own calculartor but the IRS has recently changed rules significantly look at the 72t.net site for more info


  • PAY HERE Information on my Expensive Licensing Fee Karl's Java version of the Mortgage Calculator
    Mortgage Freeware/Shareware for your Mac or PC Domain Hosted by GoDaddy
    This is a low bandwidth page; Fine for Lynx users too.
    Here's another low bandwidth calculators page at MortgageLoan.com
    Contact me, Hugh Chou, at : huchou@gmail.com
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