It’s coming to that time of the year we all dread: the end of the tax year is just over a month away. That means it’s soon time to file our expenses, itemized deductions, and tax credits – or pay an accountant to do it for us. But the good thing is, if your tax situation isn’t too complex, there a number of apps that can help you quickly calculate how much you made, how much you paid, and how much you still might owe (if anything). We take a look at four of the best (and a bonus one).
UK Tax Calculator 2014/15
The UK Tax Calculator 2014/15 app allows you to quickly estimate your Income Tax payments, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan repayments and pension contributions all by entering a few bits of financial information about yourself. You start by entering your gross income and selecting your tax year, tax code, and NI class. The app then asks you if you have any pension or student loan deductions. Once you’ve entered all that information the app quickly spits out an easy to read report of what you made in the selected tax year, how much income and NI tax you owe, and what your net income is.
A nice thing about the app is it further breaks down your tax free allowance, your taxable income, and your income tax and national insurance tax totals. Another plus is you can setup multiple users in the app so you can quickly keep a running tab of all the tax situations for every member of your household. Another nice feature is each user’s information can be passcode protected so other users can see their personal information.
UK Tax Calculator 2014/15 is £1.49.
HMRC
The self-titled HMRC app isn’t as advanced as other iOS tax apps, but you get the added bonus that it’s actually made by HMRC so it’s fairly reasonable to assume this app could be the most accurate. The app allows you to calculate your tax situation by selecting your tax year, entering your tax code, and then entering your weekly gross pay. It then spits out your total income and tax results.
What’s nice about this app is it uses layman's terms in its wording. For example, instead of throwing around terms like “net pay” it says “Your take home pay.” Another really nice feature is that this app summarizes how much you pay in simple terms: “Your tax rate is 5%. That means for every £1 you make you pay 5p in taxes.”
Unfortunately this app is only for people who pays taxes through PAYE and doesn’t support other tax classes. But it makes up for that by showing you how the Government is spending your tax money.
HMRC is a free download.
UK Tax Calculator
UK Tax Calculator is put out by the people who run UKTaxCalculators.co.uk. While the input methods are the same as most of the other tax apps (tax year, your income, tax code) this app offers a little more in features than most. For starters, it’s got some really nice pie charts that allow you to digest your tax breakdown more easily. But the really nice feature of this is the Reverse tax calculator. This allows you to enter the total amount of all your expenses throughout the year and then tells you how much more you need to earn to pay the tax on that.
For example, if you know your total bills (food, entertainment, mortgage, utilities, etc) run you £35,000 a year, simply making £35,000 a year won’t cover your costs because you’ll still need to pay taxes on that £35k. By entering in your total costs, the app will tell you what you need to make above and beyond that in order to have enough to pay all your bills and your taxes.
UK Tax Calculator is a free download. It’s ad supported, but you can get rid of the ads for a one-time in-app purchase of £0.69.
UK Salary Calculator 2014-15
Not only is this app great for those comparing salaries between and old and a new job, but it also helps you quickly calculate how much that raise or bonus is going to affect your taxes even if you aren’t changing jobs. The only thing I don’t like about this app is the linen textured background. But then again, the app is free, so you can’t complain too much.
UK Wine Tax Calculator
After doing your taxes and seeing how much you owe... you may feel like drinking. But just as a reminder that there is never an escape from taxes, the UK Wine Tax Calculator app shows you how much in taxes you are actually paying with each bottle of wine. Drink it up folks, just know that the cost of each bottle is approximately 54% tax.
by rgoodwin via Featured Articles
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