2016 Review of BNA Income Tax Planner

• Product integrates with bridges offered by popular third-party tax applications
• Product offers a wide range of calculations for multiple situations for prior, current and future years
• Product is available in both desktop and web-accessible editions

Potential Limitations:

• Does not handle non-resident taxes for all states

From the Sept. 2016 review of Tax Planning systems.

BNA Income Tax Planner, from Bloomberg BNA, is one of several tax and accounting applications designed for accounting professionals. The web-based product offers QuickStart options, instructional worksheet templates, and top-notch online security measures.

Basic System Functions: 4.75 Stars

BNA Income Tax Planner is available desktop and web-accessible applications, with the web application hosted by BNA. The user interface contains a drop-down menu bar that offers access to client files, editing options, assumptions, worksheets, graphs, client letters, and more. Users can easily choose the desired worksheet from the expandable menu at the left side of the screen, with an additional worksheet populating on the right side. More importantly, BNA Income Tax Planner allows users to easily create multiple tax scenarios for side-by-side comparisons, and perform in depth tax planning and projection for up to 20 years. BNA Income Tax Planner is updated regularly, so firms will always have access to the latest tax calculations and regulations.

In addition, the product contains seven different methods of analysis for creating more complex tax scenarios.

 

Core Tax Planning Features: 5 Stars

BNA Income Tax Planner allows users to calculate federal, state, and nonresident state income tax for capital gains, estimated tax payments, stock options, and alternative minimum tax. With the early tax planning feature, users can easily calculate withholding amounts to minimize tax liabilities. Taxes can also be calculated for self-employment tax, lump sum taxes, and Affordable Care Act taxes and penalties. Users can calculate various scenarios using both standard and itemized deductions, retirement benefits such as ROTH IRA and Keogh deductions, capital gains and losses, estimated taxes, and any related carryovers.

Users can easily create a series of “what-if” scenarios that explore a variety of tax options for clients, offering tax management options for typical life events such as marriage, the birth of a child or child adoption, home purchase and selling, as well as stock options, with users able to view the differing scenarios side-by-side for easy comparison.

BNA Income Tax Planner offers a federal only version of the product that includes state income tax calculations for all 50 states, New York City, and Washington, DC.

 

Reporting: 5 Stars

BNA Income Tax Planner offers good reporting options that gives users able to review reports prior to printing. Other reporting features include custom graphs and charts that can be saved as a PDF file and sent to clients directly from the product. Reports can also be saved and emailed as a text file and converted to an Excel file when desired.

Import / Export / Integration: 4.75 Stars

BNA Income Tax Planner is compatible with a variety of automated interfaces offered by third party applications including GoSystem Tax RS, Lacerte 1040, CCH ProSystem fx Tax, Ultra Tax CS, and Crosslink 1040. BNA Income Tax Planner also allows users to link product data to Microsoft Windows such as Word and Excel.

Help / Support: 5 Stars

Product support is included in BNA Income Tax Planner, with users able to easily access product support and easily download any product updates directly from their website. A knowledge base is available for users to access and other tools such as FAQ’s, a product installation guide, videos, and other online demos.

Summary & Pricing

BNA Income Tax Planner is a good fit for firms that want solid third party integration, as well as anytime online access. BNA product pricing depends on deployment method, as well as number of product users, with support included in pricing. Current base pricing for new users to the online version of the product is running $1,148, with additional user licenses extra.

2016 Overall Rating: 5 Stars