This all started innocently enough...
When I moved from Berlin back to my hometown Copenhagen I also got serious about paying into a pension plan. Which made my tax situation a big mess, and estimating my 2023 taxes felt like I was signing a mortgage contract in colored crayon.
"How hard could it be?"
“Tax laws are really just closed systems“, a younger, bluer-eyed version of me deducted, not yet aware of the fuse I'd just lit for a future headache. "Building a model that accounts for 80% of the important stuff—I mean—how hard could that be?”
Sigh...
Dear reader, a month and a half later I can confidentially tell you: Pretty hard.
Which is why I’m happy to finally be done with this estimator in as much as:
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It actually works
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It provides practical for one of the >0.5% of earth's population who needs to project their Danish income tax using only 1 data point.
Here's what that looks like:
Hobby Horse-led Development
Snark aside, making tools for yourself, then releasing them publicly, is such a wonderfully myopic, hobby-horse driven quirky process that I will never not love.
Like, take the name ("Please!" 🥁): It's corny, yes, but I have this personal rule: Very Serious Projects get dumb, silly names so they feel lighter—less overwhelming—as I build them.
No sensible actual business project lets you do that. This one did.
How it's built
Tax-A-Tron EZ-Estimator 4000 is built on Decipad, which is sort of like Excel, but fun. The tool has 4 sections:
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Quick Result (gross → net income)
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Detailed result
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Accuracy Enhancer (deductible expenses)
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Under The Hood
The calculation formulas lean on the calculation methods in a spreadsheet for estimating income tax developed and published by a citizen watch group for Danish tax legislation Tax.dk.
A crucial difference between that spreadsheet and The Tax-A-Tron EZ-Estimator4000 is about focus. The goal with the Tax-A-Tron is usable by 80% to get 90% of the way there.
