Legally Lower Your Tax Bill
US tax planning tools and guides: marginal versus effective rates, pre-tax account strategy, and take-home pay optimization.
Your step-by-step path
- 1
Find your actual marginal rate
Every tax decision — pre-tax versus Roth, timing a bonus, taking a deduction — depends on your marginal rate, not your effective one. Most people know neither.
Open the Paycheck Calculator - 2
Fill tax-advantaged space in the right order
401(k) to the match, then HSA if eligible, then IRA, then back to the 401(k). The HSA is the only triple-tax-advantaged account in the US code and is routinely underused.
Open the Retirement Savings Calculator - 3
Choose pre-tax or Roth deliberately
Pre-tax wins when your rate in retirement will be lower than today's; Roth wins when it'll be higher. Early-career and mid-retirement-gap years favor Roth; peak earning years usually favor pre-tax.
Open the Retirement Savings Calculator - 4
Check whether itemizing beats the standard deduction
Around 90% of filers take the standard deduction. Itemizing generally only wins with substantial mortgage interest, large charitable giving, or high medical expenses.
Tools for lower taxes
Retirement Savings Calculator
Find your target, see the gap, and check whether you are leaving employer money behind.
Paycheck Calculator
Federal tax, FICA, state tax and deductions — see exactly what lands in your account.
Federal Income Tax Calculator
Bracket-by-bracket breakdown, your effective rate, and what the next dollar costs.
Go deeper
The topic hubs behind this goal, with every related tool and guide.
Taxes
Know your real marginal rate before you make a tax decision.
3 tools
Retirement
Find the number you need, and the date it becomes reachable.
3 tools
Salary & Income
Translate an offer into the number that lands in your account.
3 tools
Want a plan tailored to you?
Tell the AI coach about your situation and get a personalized version of this path.
Lower Taxes questions
What is the best way to reduce taxable income?
Maximize pre-tax retirement contributions and HSA contributions — these reduce taxable income dollar for dollar and are available to most employees without any complexity. Beyond that, tax-loss harvesting in taxable brokerage accounts and bunching charitable deductions into alternating years are the two most broadly applicable strategies.
Is a large tax refund good?
Not particularly. A refund means you overpaid throughout the year and lent the government money at zero interest. Adjusting your W-4 to reduce withholding puts that money in your paycheck instead, where it can earn a yield or pay down debt. The exception is behavioral — if the refund is the only way you save a lump sum, that has genuine value.
Should I do a Roth conversion?
Conversions work best in low-income years — early retirement before Social Security begins, a sabbatical, a job change — when you can move money at a lower rate than you'd otherwise pay later. The tax is due in the conversion year, so it needs to be paid from outside the account for the strategy to make sense.