Digital tax return review and planning startup Holistiplan has rolled out a new feature, called “Solve for Max,” that helps advisors find the upper limit on a client’s tax bracket.
“Specifically, advisors seek to raise or lower an income number so the client ends up just under the limit of a given tax bracket,” said Roger Pine, co-founder of the tech company. “With ‘Solve For Max’ (now officially out of beta), it’s now easy to find the optimal bracket. And that includes those ‘hidden’ brackets that come from things like medical deduction AGI floors, Net Investment Income Taxes, and Social Security taxation rules.”
For advisors unfamiliar with Holistiplan, the tool can be thought of as a digital, more automated version of the comprehensive tax return review checklists that some advisors offer their clients. It can help advisors find situations like Medicare adjustments and Roth conversions that add value for clients. The tool is also able to model hypothetical scenarios for clients, so they can plan for certain tax situations in the coming year.
Holistiplan was the XYPN FinTech competition winner for 2019.
“Within the Scenario Analysis screen, advisors can now simply click ‘Solve For Max’ on a given scenario, and the software will automatically hunt for the amount that will get the client just up to that next tax bracket level, but not over,” said co-founder Kevin Lozer. “Advisors used to have to enter numbers over and over again to get to the same result, but now the computer does that work for them. And if advisors want to dig deeper, there’s a link to the Range Calc screen, which will run hundreds of scenarios automatically, drawing for them a curve of marginal tax outcomes as their client steps up or down in income.”
Lozer and Pine will host the first in a series of quarterly webinars on April 28 at 3 p.m. Eastern time to help advisors through a tax return and point out planning opportunities.
In early March, the company announced it was officially supporting 2019 tax return uploads. The firm also announced support for organizing client tax returns by household, as of Feb. 29, a change that will result in a number of expected improvements in the coming months.