Tax Planning in RightCapital: Tax Strategies and Tax Analyzer

With tax-planning becoming more important in financial planning, two independent measures have recognized those features within RightCapital. Advisors gave RightCapital the highest tax planning rating among the three most widely used comprehensive planning platforms in the Kitces Report, “How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning” (released in March 2025). In September 2026, RightCapital's expanded tax-planning features (specifically the Tax Strategies module and Tax Analyzer) were named the winner in the Financial Planning category at the Wealth Management Industry Awards.

Both point at the same underlying shift: tax planning has moved from a footnote in the planning process to something many clients notice first.

Why tax planning became one of the advisor's most visible deliverables

More than 90% of advisors say they do tax planning, and Michael Kitces has said that figure has held steady for about eight years. What's changed isn't whether advisors do it—it's what "it" means.

The old version was tax planning attached to a product: here's the annuity, here's how it's taxed. The new version starts with the client's actual 1040. As Kitces put it at RightInsights in February 2025, "We've gone from, 'I do tax planning around what I'm implementing for you' to this realm of 'I'm going to pull out your tax return and see if I can find opportunities and ideas that might lay some additional value on you.'"

That's a harder service to deliver. It's also the one clients notice.

Tax planning is one of the few parts of financial planning where the client sees a result within a year. So much of what planners do is a promise about the future—you build the plan, the client follows it, and in a few decades everyone finds out whether it worked. Kitces described a potential client interaction: "We're going to give you all this great advice and 30 years from now you are so going to thank me for this."

With tax planning, you could find an opportunity on a return that the client will see on next year's return. Kitces gave another hypothetical client conversation: "I would just like to point out to you that I literally saved you $3,722 in actual taxes last year by finding this opportunity on your tax return."

It also creates a natural annual touchpoint. A retirement projection doesn't need rebuilding every year, but a tax picture changes constantly—income shifts, brackets inflate, laws change, or a client sells a property.

Doing that well takes two different skills: reading what's in front of you, and modeling what to do about it.

Tax planning tools in RightCapital

RightCapital's tax planning tools help advisors with both of these challenges. Tax Analyzer tells you more about a client’s tax situation in a specific year. Tax Strategies models what to do about it across the life of the plan. Together, these make up the expanded tax-planning Features that won the Financial Planning category at the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards, aka “The Wealthies.” Separately, in the Investment module, Tax Allocation breaks out accounts into the three tax buckets.

Tax Analyzer

Within RightCapital’s Tax Analyzer tool, advisors can upload a client's tax return (the 1040 + any related schedules) as a single PDF. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) extracts the data and redacts sensitive information before the file is stored. Returns from 2023, 2024, and 2025 are supported, and you can project forward a year from an uploaded return to see what the next year looks like.

No upload? No problem. Tax Analyzer also builds a projected tax return for any year in the plan, drawn from the client’s actual profile data. The projections update as the plan changes so you can analyze years ahead, then propose line-item changes against it.

From there, evaluate the tax picture through key charts.

• Federal Income Tax Summary: Shows the income sources contributing to the client's taxable picture alongside the three rates that apply to it—capital gains, income tax, and effective tax rate
• Investment Income Efficiency: Backs into how the portfolio itself is driving the tax bill, separating taxable from tax-exempt interest, ordinary from qualified dividends, and short-term from long-term capital gains
• Ordinary Income Bracket: Lists the income range for each bracket next to how much of the client's income falls into each one, making conversations about marginal versus effective rates simpler

The Comparisons tab is where the impacts of line item changes start to get visualized. Propose a change to the original scenario—a different line 1a W-2 income figure, an adjustment to line 11’s gifts by cash—and the comparisons charts update alongside it. The original is either an uploaded return or one projected from the client's plan; the alternative is that same baseline with any changes you make in the Action Items. Comparison charts then show the impact directly: differences in federal income tax, AGI, taxable income, and deductions, and where each scenario lands against the ordinary income bracket and capital gains thresholds.

Dive even deeper in the designated Thresholds tab, which lists income thresholds and phase-outs governing account contributions, tax credits, and deductions, and more. See at a glance where a client sits in your proposal versus original tax return relative to the limits that matter.

RightCapital’s Tax Analyzer is included with Premium and Platinum subscriptions.

Tax Strategies

Tax Strategies handles three tax-smart moves an advisor can evaluate, and models them together rather than one at a time. Sal Lavely, of Absolute Retirement Solutions, describes what that gives him: "RightCapital tells me where the money's coming from, which money is the smartest to move, and why it's the smartest."

• Asset location: Shows how much fixed income versus equity each tax bucket holds based on the client’s investment asset allocation. Create a proposal controlling how the equity portion of a client's asset allocation spreads across taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts. The default is pro-rata, spreading equities proportionally across all three buckets. The alternatives fill each bucket completely before overflowing into the next.
• Asset withdrawal sequencing: Shows which tax bucket the client pulls from to fund negative net flows, and in what order. Model different tax-efficient withdrawal sequences and see how it impacts the plan. The default is taxable, then tax-deferred, then tax-free.
• Roth conversions or normal distributions: Focuses on how much to convert and in which years. Use the slider to fill up a specific tax bracket, and the platform converts or distributes as much as possible each year without having the client jump into a higher tax bracket. Tax bracket options include converting or distributing up to certain ordinary income brackets, capital gains brackets, and Medicare premium tax brackets for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA) adjustments.

That last target is worth calling out. IRMAA is a cliff, not a ramp. Next year's IRMAA is based on the previous two years' income, and if you cross a threshold by a dollar, the full Medicare surcharge applies.

That makes it a real decision rather than a rule. For many clients, the right move is keeping conversions under the first threshold so IRMAA is never triggered, which you can model by filling up to the lowest Medicare premium bracket. A client with a large traditional IRA and a decade of required minimum distributions (RMDs) ahead is sometimes better off accepting one surcharge tier in exchange for converting substantially more at a lower rate. Instead of guessing, you can model each approach. An option within the Calibration tab charts Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) against the IRMAA thresholds so you can see exactly where conversions land.

Tax Allocation

The Tax Allocation chart in the Investment module (also available as a Snapshot widget) breaks a client's invested assets into the three tax buckets, and you can click into any bucket to see the individual accounts inside it. Patrick Williford, CRPC® of Carolina Financial Advisors specializes in multi-year Roth conversion strategy for high-net-worth families, and says that chart is often what makes the case: "Most clients in the affluent, high-net-worth sphere have heard about Roth conversions from their friends. But when they see the tax allocation chart saying 'this much is pre-tax, this much is tax-free, this much is taxable,' it can be surprising. They've got a tax bomb waiting to go off if we don't do something about it."

That diagnosis is also what makes the CPA conversation productive. "Having the power to come to the CPA with recommendations with the data to back it up is pretty exciting for me. And then you can actually quantify the tax savings at the end of the day."

Solving for top strategies instead of guessing

Tax strategies interact. A Roth conversion changes taxable income, which changes the optimal withdrawal sequence, which changes the balances asset location is allocating across, which changes future RMDs, which changes how much room the next conversion has.

“Solve for Top Strategies” within the Tax Strategies tool mixes and matches every option within those three toggles and returns the five combinations with the highest tax-adjusted ending wealth. The result is a color-coded table showing the ending asset values and the selections behind each. You also have the option to pick and choose which strategies to explore, or to isolate one lever, such as to show a dedicated Roth conversion analysis without asset location or withdrawal sequencing.

You can now walk into a client meeting with five options and compelling visuals to back them up.

One plan, several strategies

A client weighing retirement at 62 versus 67 isn't looking at one tax situation. Retiring earlier and delaying Social Security opens up more low-income years before benefits and RMDs begin—conversion room a single strategy can't reflect for both paths at once.

You aren't limited to a single Tax Strategy proposal. Create additional tax proposals or copy an existing one, then toggle between them as you work. Each is independently customizable across all three levers, and each appears in the Retirement Analysis module alongside the original current and proposed strategies, so you can attach different tax proposals to different proposed plans or compare two side by side within the Monte Carlo simulation analysis.

How RightCapital’s tax-planning tools look in practice

Consider a hypothetical 75-year-old widow with a substantial traditional IRA she isn’t going to rely on for post-retirement income. Her RMDs are pushing her taxable income up each year, and because IRMAA uses a two-year MAGI lookback, those RMDs will drive her Medicare premiums higher two years down the line.

Tax Strategies models the phased conversion—how much to convert each year, which IRMAA tier to fill up to, and how the added tax and premium costs affect her cash flow. The output is a comparison she can follow: what happens if nothing changes, and what happens under the proposed strategy. This includes what her heirs inherit, since a traditional IRA passing to an adult child carries more exposure than a Roth IRA does.

Tax Analyzer shows a clear picture of where this client’s tax return stands. Perhaps she is interested in giving to charity. Create a proposal in the tax return line items to see how a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) would change that picture. A QCD counts toward her RMDs while staying out of adjusted gross income, so it serves her philanthropic goals and eases the income pressure driving up her Medicare premiums.

Being able to show that comparison, rather than describe it, is what tends to move the conversation. Thomas Marki, CPA, CEPA® of AXIOM Founders Family Office Inc. works with small business owners on tax, business exit, estate, and charitable planning. He describes a charitably inclined client already giving $100,000 a year, who was holding highly appreciated stock he wasn't emotionally attached to in a high tax year.

"So we proposed donating $300,000 of stock to a donor-advised fund, three years of giving in one year. His lifestyle wouldn't change one bit, but he'd get a huge tax break. RightCapital let me show him the savings on the tax page with just a toggle, and that's a win-win for everybody."

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See it for yourself

To see how Tax Analyzer and Tax Strategies could fit into your workflow, schedule a 1:1 demo or start a 14-day free trial.