I'd like to create an excel spreadsheet to calculate my federal tax this year. What is the appropriate formula that is used to generate the 2007 1040 tax table (married filing jointly). Is there a site that discusses this?
see
What do you think this is? 1982? For less than $50 you can BUY a tax preparation program that will run circles around anything you could concoct with an Excel spreadsheet, and won't take 100 or more hours of your time to debug and run.
That'll do it. Thanks Joe
Using the tax rate schedule, the tax table is generated by using the tax (rounded to the nearest dollar) for the exact middle of the range. The table is in $50 range increments for $3k-$100k, $25 increments for $25-$3k, and $1 increments below $25 (grouped together by the resulting amount).
Example: A taxable income of $33,282 is in the range of 33,250-33,300, and has a tax computed as if it were a TI of $33,275 (the middle of the range).
To answer you last question first: microsoft.public.excel.misc would be one appropriate newsgroup in which to post the question.
I used to use Excel to prepare the numbers for my tax returns. But I agree with the comments that you would be better off buying TurboTax, TaxCut or something of that ilk.
Having said that, in order to compute federal tax for MFJ based on taxable income (line 43 in the 2007 Form 1040) in A1:
=max(A1*10%, 1565+(A1-15650)*15%, 8772.50+(A1-63700)*25%, 24972.50+(A1-128500)*28%, 43830.50+(A1-195850)*33%, 94601+(A1-349700)*35%)
There is a shorter equivalent formula. But I prefer this form because it can be constructed directly from the schedule.
you can even get free tax programs like
Have you tried this one? It's been very accurate for my uses:
BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.