Build a personal tax refund calculator instead of paying a CPA
A user had Claude Code build an interactive tax calculator using 2025 tables to avoid a $300 CPA fee.
Done withClaude Code
- What they did
- Brian described the need in plain English: a 2025 federal, Ohio and Columbus refund estimate for a married couple filing jointly with one child. Claude Code asked clarifying questions and for permission to search the web for current tax tables. It then scaffolded a Vite, React, TypeScript and Tailwind app with a calculator module for each jurisdiction.
- How it went
- It produced a working single-page app in one sitting. It takes W-2, interest, dividend and capital gains inputs, updates refunds live, shows charts, and saves to local storage. The author did not report checking the numbers against a real return.
- Worth knowing
- The author still plans to have the CPA prepare the actual return. He treats the tool as a planning estimate only, and he saved the $300 quoted for the estimate.
Try it yourself with Claude Code
Build me an interactive tax refund calculator using this year's official tax tables and brackets, where I can input my income, filing status, and deductions to estimate my refund or owed amount. Make it a simple web page or script I can run locally, and stop once I can enter numbers and get a correct estimate.
Source: medium.com · Undated
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