Taxes touch every part of the financial plan. Where they invest, how they save, when they take income, whether a Roth conversion makes sense. You can't make good recommendations without understanding the tax picture.
How I think about it
The tax module isn't for filing taxes. It's for tax planning. The question is: given everything we know about this client's income, deductions, and investments, what does their tax liability actually look like? And more importantly, what could we change to improve it?
Running scenarios is where the real value is. "What happens if we do a $50,000 Roth conversion this year?" Copy the calculator, change the number, and compare. "What if they exercise those stock options in January instead of December?" Same thing. The ability to model before recommending is what separates advice from guessing.
The MAGI thresholds section is especially useful. It shows you exactly where the client sits relative to limits that affect IRA deductions, Roth contributions, the child tax credit, Medicare surcharges, and capital gains rates. Sometimes the best tax move is doing nothing because any additional income would push them over a threshold.
How it works in Kerdora
The tax calculator pulls income from the client's cash flow profile and pre-fills what it can. You can override anything. It walks through three sections:
Configuration — filing status, tax year, state, number of dependents and children under 17.
Income — W-2 wages and self-employment income are per-person. Investment income (dividends, capital gains, rental income, interest) and retirement income are household-level.
Deductions — above-the-line (retirement contributions, HSA) and below-the-line (standard or itemized with medical, SALT, mortgage interest, and charitable).
From those inputs, it calculates federal income tax, state tax, FICA, the Net Investment Income Tax, and child tax credits. You get marginal and effective rates, plus a full breakdown of how each number was calculated.
You can create multiple scenarios, rename them, and duplicate them. The primary scenario feeds into the client's overview.