A tool that visualizes how your income taxes are calculated.

Taxes are Beautiful visualizes how your income taxes are calculated. It interactively creates a Sankey diagram from tax forms (W-2, 1099) that you input. This flow diagram shows how your itemized deductions stack up against the standard deduction and how taxable income flows into tax brackets.

I designed and built this tool for tax planning. Suppose I am thinking of selling stock, what is the impact on the sale on my taxes, and how much extra do I need to withhold to avoid penalties?

This tool opens the black box of commerical income tax software. They purposely obscure the nitty-gritty of how taxes are calculated in the name of simplicity. For good reason! The US tax code is fiendishly complex and full of loopholes and carve-outs.

But I’ve always wondered why inputting some numbers into the tax prep software changed my income tax, while inputting others didn’t change it at all. Clearly there is a non-linear relationship!

Taxes are Beautiful shows how your taxes are calculated in a clear and transparent way. It helps the taxpayer go beyond surface-level simplicity in order to make good decisions.

What I did

• Design and Sankey diagram layout
• Vibe coded with Claude Code