Do FIRECalc results factor income taxes?

[mystang52]

When I plug in my spending data, I use a high estimate of my current spending habits. Do I need to add in estimated income taxes as "spending" to get an accurate assessment, or does FIRECalc already do it?

 

[Midpack]

I thought it was more prominently stated, but evidently it's not. You need to account for all taxes (Fed, state, local, income, prop, etc.) in your spending.

Why don't you have a space for taxable portfolio and another space for nontaxable portfolio?

FIRECalc ignores taxable versus nontaxable portfolios right now. Since it only uses historical data to determine how a portfolio would behave, with no guesses by anyone about what will happen to inflation, market performance, and so forth, and we don't have historical tax rates for the period for which I have market data, I can't add tax planning without changing the philosophy of the program. Just planning on x% tax rates would make all the historical examples meaningless, when changing tax rates would have at least some effect on the market returns.

If I can figure out how to do this in a way that would not corrupt the results, I'll do it. For now, I prefer to leave the tax planning portion to programs like www.i-orp.com -- an outstanding tool!

 

[REWahoo]

For the answer to your question see the FIRECalc Support forum: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f36/firecalc-and-taxes-54867.html

 

[Animorph]

FIRECalc is really about portfolio withdrawals, not expenses.

 

[galeno]

I calculate a tax ratio (TR) = port taxes / gross annual withdrawal. I add this to our port's expense ratio (ER) to get the total expense ratio (TER).

TER is what's used in Firecalc's portfolio expense box.

 

[Midpack]

I calculate a tax ratio (TR) = port taxes / gross annual withdrawal. I add this to our port's expense ratio (ER) to get the total expense ratio (TER).

TER is what's used in Firecalc's portfolio expense box.

The OP is asking about income taxes. Unless I'm missing something, judging by your sig line TER you're talking about investing fees (more commonly known as expense ratio) which has little or nothing to do with income taxes.

 

[galeno]

I'm talking about both the expense ratio (ER) and the tax ratio (TR). To calculate your income tax ratio divide income taxes paid on the annual withdrawal by the port's value.

E.g. Port Value = $2500. AWR = $100. Income tax = $10. TR = 10/2500 = 0.004 = 0.4%.

Our TR = 0.42%. ER = 0.15%. TER = 0.57%.