Tax Calculator
I designed and coded an internal tax calculator for the company. There are few comprehensive public tax calculators, so I needed to create one that worked and had a usable interface. This calculator is used by their Customer Resources team to calculate preliminary financial information for the customers, and the goal is for it to be a prototype that the Engineering team creates a container for.
I used Excel and met with the Customer Resources team to create 8 iterations of the tax calculator. This calculator will serve as a prototype tool used by the company to provide financial estimates, breakdowns, and predictions in their monthly books.
First, I researched other tax calculators available on the Internet. Most of the other tax calculators only took in several values and didn't provide a comprehensive financial breakdown. My goal was to create a more detailed tax calculator that would take in more values and display a much wider range of financial information, along with a simple interface.
I used Excel to create several tables that would take input values such as client information, different forms of income, and deduction items. Considerations I needed to make were how to structure information visually in Excel, code in tax calculations, indicate input and output fields, and which tax calculations to include. After many rounds of feedback and user testing, I made a functional calculator that was easy for the team to use. I structured various financial inputs and outputs under categories and tables, and rigorously tested my calculations to ensure that they were correct. Among some of the calculations that I needed to integrate were federal and state tax brackets and adjustable flexible tax rates. For each input, I decided if they were to remain static of editable depending if they were flexible numbers.
This project taught me how to present information in a visually legible way in a different format and software, and I learned a lot of Excel functions in the process. Making this calculator made me familiar with Excel calculations and how to utilize the cellular structure to create a clear and simple interface.