General Tax Calculation Question

The results of the tax/SS calculations are simply reduced [increased] by the appropriate percentages. So, no, the brackets don't change, only the effective tax/benefit rates.

In general we will not pursue legislation in the year in which it is passed (especially tax legislation since so much of it is actually not in the enabling legislation but buried in the technical corrections that don't go before the whole Congress). So anything passed this year that is intended to be implemented "retroactively" will probably not show up in the next update (the current update is scheduled for 01-May-2009 and I don't realistically expect any fundamental tax legislation prior to that so the earliest possible time would be 01-Aug-2009). Anything passed in terms of tax policy intended for inclusion in the taxes this year will generally show up in the 01-Feb-2010 update (typically that's the update that will include the state and federal tax changes for the prior year). We have made the occasional exception to that, e.g., the one year AMT "fix" that the Bush administration passed to suck up to the middle class, the ROR for large cap stocks from 2008, and a few other bits of data were all stuck in ahead of their normal schedule.

The short answer is "if we feel that it's important enough". $400/year for most folks isn't a deal breaker and if ESPlanner doesn't know about it, it results in a more conservative plan, i.e., ESPlanner does no harm by telling you to spend less than you could. Should they do something that violates this, e.g., raise taxes, then we would do something dramatic in the short term.

Best,

Dick Munroe