Tax on stock sales, one year at a time
Equity & RSUs estimates tax on the sales you have recorded, and two things were wrong with that estimate.
- Short-term gains now fill the lower brackets first. The long-term gain was priced as if the short-term gain weren’t there, so both could claim the same 0% band. Take a single filer with $40,000 of ordinary taxable income, a $10,000 short-term gain and a $10,000 long-term gain, both sold in 2026, with no state income tax. The page showed about $1,283. It now shows $2,700, stacking the gains the way the IRS capital-gain worksheet does.
- Each tax year stands alone. Sales from different years were added together and priced once, on the current year’s tables. Now each year is priced on its own tables, and a net loss offsets up to $3,000 of ordinary income and carries the rest forward, following the Schedule D carryover worksheet. When your sales span years, a table shows each one, and the page states its assumptions: your current income and state rate stand in for each year, and only sales recorded in GlidePath count. A year this version has no tax tables for shows no estimate rather than one priced on another year’s tables.
Tax-loss harvesting checks your IRAs
Tax-loss harvesting left tax-advantaged accounts out of its wash-sale check, so a loss in your taxable account could read as harvestable and “clear” even though your Roth IRA had bought the same fund ten days earlier. That sale is a wash sale, and because the replacement shares are in an IRA, the disallowed loss isn’t added to their basis — it is lost rather than deferred (IRS Rev. Rul. 2008-5).
Purchases in any account in the household file, a spouse’s included, now count. Such a lot reads wash-sale risk · IRA purchase and its loss leaves the harvestable total; a 401(k), HSA or 529 purchase is flagged too, noting that published guidance doesn’t settle what happens to that loss. The check now covers the 30 days on both sides of the sale date, where it used to look back only, and a same-fund lot dated only by a statement date inside that window reads can’t confirm. Your harvestable total may be lower than before; that is the correction.
Retirement-account calculators
- Backdoor Roth calculator. The page asked for your December 31 IRA balance but calculated as if that were the balance before the conversion. It now takes the full December 31 value, including any remaining basis, plus other distributions and any contributions for the year made after year-end, following Form 8606. Example: a $50,000 December 31 value, $10,000 of prior basis and a $50,000 conversion, with no new contribution for the year, give a $45,000 taxable conversion. A link saved from an earlier version now asks for the year-end value instead of quietly reusing the old number. If you kept a result from this page, re-running it shows the corrected figure.
- Solo 401(k) vs SEP. The page could grant an age-50 catch-up you had already used in another employer’s plan. For a sole proprietor, it also measured the employer contribution and after-tax room against too large a compensation base. With $50,000 of profit at age 55 in 2026 and no deferral used at another employer, after-tax room showed $12,675; it now shows $3,381. A new optional field covers the 403(b) 15-year-service catch-up.
Social Security and the Tax Valley
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Single households no longer receive a nonexistent spouse’s benefit. A single person’s retirement projection could add a spousal benefit on top of their own Social Security. In a case with a $2,500 monthly benefit claimed at full retirement age, the app counted $45,000 a year instead of $30,000. The correction flows through retirement projections, success probabilities, Tax Valley, ACA estimates, saved-plan comparisons, the historical backtest and claim-age strategies. Single-household results may be lower. This single-household fix does not change couples’ figures; the spousal and survivor corrections below can.
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Spousal benefits start from the right age. A spousal benefit can’t begin until both spouses have filed, but it was being reduced as if it began earlier. Example: someone who claims at 62, with a $1,000 benefit at full retirement age, has a same-age spouse with $3,000 who files at 70. Once both have filed, the early claimant’s benefit now comes to $1,200 a month, not $1,025. Your own delayed-retirement credits now offset the spousal top-up.
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Survivor benefits follow SSA’s limits. The survivor’s age reduction is now applied before the cap for a worker who claimed early. A survivor projection also no longer inherits delayed credits from a claim the worker had planned for after their death.
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The Tax Valley stops showing a year that has already closed. A household already at or past the year its required minimum distributions (RMDs) begin was still shown a pre-RMD year with conversion room — one retired single person born in 1953, with $30,000 of annual spending and no Social Security, saw $44,550 of 12% room in 2026, the year their RMDs begin. The panel now says The pre-RMD conversion window has passed, and notes that conversions remain possible after RMDs begin but aren’t modelled there. The first RMD year is now the calendar year you reach the RMD age, and the extra deduction at 65 and the Medicare premium look-back use your age in the tax year, per IRS rules, so Tax Valley figures can move for households near those birthdays.
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A survivor’s plan no longer waits on a partner’s retirement that never happens. When a plan has one partner dying before their planned retirement date, that unlived date used to hold back the survivor’s ACA bridge — the years of marketplace coverage before Medicare — and the Tax Valley. Both now start from the survivor’s own situation. Survivor years are priced on the one-person poverty line, using the published HHS tables, including Alaska’s and Hawaii’s. If the entered two-person poverty line cannot be matched to a published HHS table, survivor years show no credit estimate and are left out of totals.
The retirement readout names the year it actually uses
The At retirement amount, chart marker and RSU comparison now use the same household retirement year. If a partner dies before their planned retirement, the readout follows the survivor instead of waiting for a date that partner never reaches. When partners are different ages, it names their ages in that year. If nobody living retires inside the plan, the amount is not shown, rather than being reported as $0. A real retirement result of $0 still reads $0.
Home now uses that same household retirement year for its median nest egg. Home and the local Ask answers also recognize when a spending target has no retirement savings or contributions behind it and explain what is missing. In Compare plans, each selected plan is checked after its saved changes are applied: a plan that adds contributions can be compared, while an empty column shows Not projected.
Check the income behind an ACA estimate
The first health-insurance estimate now states what income it counts before showing a credit: Social Security, the primary person’s pension, and portfolio withdrawals assumed needed for spending. It does not add a spouse’s pension, wages, freelance or rental income, annuities, Roth conversions, interest, dividends, capital gains or other income. Missing income can reduce or erase the credit; employer coverage and other eligibility rules can also change it. This is a planning estimate, not a calculation of the credit on your tax return.
Estimated tax: the next installment, and what counts as paid
Once you have entered last year’s tax figures, the Business page replaces the rough year-to-date set-aside with the next estimated-tax installment: what is still open on it after the payments you have recorded, its due date, and anything still open from earlier installments, with the math one click away. The tax jar adds a per-quarter table of the amount, what you recorded by its due date, and what is left.
What counts as a payment changed too:
- A returned payment cancels the payment it reverses. The tax jar counted a returned or reversed payment as another payment, and the Action Queue treated any entry in the category as paid, returned or not.
- Only federal estimated payments clear a federal deadline. The reminder now clears only on a payment in Taxes:Federal Estimated Tax Payment — not on the general Taxes:Federal Tax category, where GlidePath’s built-in suggestions file IRS payments including a balance due, and not on a state estimated payment. If you record estimates under the general category, the reminder stays open until you move them.
- A late January payment gets a question. A payment made after the January installment’s due date, while that installment is still open, prompts Which tax year is this payment for? in the tax jar, and the reminder follows your answer.
- A partial payment no longer clears a quarter. Once last year’s figures are entered, an estimated-tax reminder clears when that quarter’s installment is covered, not when any payment lands near its deadline. Earlier, a small late payment could clear a missed quarter. Until a quarter is covered, the reminder says how much of it is still open.
- The deadline figures on Business agree. The deadline reminder near the top of Business, the tax-jar line beside the next IRS deadline, and the Tax date item now show what is still open on the coming installment, the same figure as the next-installment line. When your recorded payments already cover it, they say nothing more is due that quarter, instead of repeating the full quarter’s amount.
- A loss year still gets the reminder. When this year shows a loss, the set-aside estimate is $0, but the safe harbor (the prepayment amount, based on last year’s tax, that avoids an underpayment penalty) can still require installments. The deadline reminder and the Tax date item used to go quiet in that case; they now appear whenever an installment is owed.
The Calendar also placed quarterly estimated-tax deadlines on fixed dates; it now moves them off weekends and the holidays that move an IRS deadline, as the rest of the app already did.
Schedule C and the accountant pack
- Split charges count on their own lines. A split business-account charge reached Schedule C and the accountant pack as one charge, under its original category; each part now lands on its own line. The split editor also opened a first split at $0.00, so it couldn’t balance, and reopened a saved split without its categories — both fixed. A split now has to add up to the cent to save; one saved under the old one-cent tolerance still loads as stored.
- A personal-account charge can carry a business share. Split lines on a personal-account charge get a Business tick, and a percentage you type becomes a business line and a personal line (the box starts empty). The marked share reaches Schedule C, and the accountant pack lists each share with its source account.
- A closed business account keeps its history. Closing a business account removed its rows from Schedule C, the business ledger, the accountant pack and the receipt check — including rows from months it was open. They now count for the years they happened, with the account listed as (closed). Balances and cash position still leave it out.
- The $400 minimum qualified business income deduction — the break that starts in 2026 for a small, active business — is now applied after the 20%-of-taxable-income cap, the order the law sets. It is also limited to a business you materially participate in, which QBI now asks about. Example: an active business with $1,000 of qualified income and $1,000 of taxable income showed a $200 deduction while its own table listed the $400 minimum. Until you answer Yes on QBI (or on Schedule C Line G), the minimum is left out, so the figure can be lower than before. QBI’s tax value now shows federal income tax only; state treatment varies and is not included. S-corp comparisons and the marginal-rate view assume an owner who works in the business.
S-corp comparisons also explain the QBI difference correctly. The explanation now distinguishes a smaller S-corp QBI base from the wage limit reducing a sole proprietor’s deduction, and displays an unsigned difference beside its direction.
Loans, spending and reports
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Category averages now count months with no spending. Each category averages over the months its own side (Personal or Business) had expense activity. A month when that category spent nothing counts as $0, so an irregular category’s average can be lower than in 1.25. Its average stays the same in its Personal or Business view and in All. The All view states each row’s month count, and the CSV includes a Months averaged column so its denominator is explicit.
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Reports recognizes when the Tax Valley has passed. A retiree already taking required minimum distributions now sees Window passed, rather than a Ready link to a pre-RMD window that had already closed.
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Reports and Loans share one payoff calculation. Reports previously estimated some loans by dividing the balance by the whole payment, including escrow, while ignoring interest. It now uses the Loans schedule, with escrow kept out of principal payments. A historical schedule that ended before today does not make a still-positive saved balance read as paid. When a payment cannot cover the interest, the pages explain why payoff is unavailable.
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Loan schedules use the due date you saved. On Loans, payments now stay on your saved day of the month, so a short February can’t pull March’s payment early and add an extra interest period. Where an interest-bearing loan’s balance is dated before its last scheduled payment, the page could show a single month’s interest across a year-long gap; it now shows the saved balance and terms under Payoff projection unavailable, with no schedule or balloon estimate, and points to your lender’s schedule or a newer statement balance.
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Refunds and reversals are netted. Spending now shows net spending — purchases less refunds — and says so when refunds outweigh purchases instead of showing an empty view. A reversed paycheck reduces income on Reports, category averages count zero-spending months within the selected side’s activity window, and transfers no longer appear among a month’s biggest spending changes. Deliberately gross views, such as Top merchants, are labelled “purchases before refunds”.
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“Exclude from budgets and reports” now means one thing. When you edit a transaction you can choose Keep current treatment, Include or Exclude. Choosing Exclude leaves that transaction’s income or expense out of every summary that reads it: spending and cash flow, Reports, Budgets, goal funding, business profit and loss, Schedule C, the accountant pack, the receipt check, and which estimated-tax payments count as paid. The ledger amount and your saved balances don’t change. A flag that came in with an older import keeps its earlier meaning until you choose.
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Reports counts the same income as Cash Flow and Spending. An older import can mark a real paycheck as excluded, and Cash Flow and Spending have always counted it as income. Reports left it out, so its year-to-date income could differ from both for the same household. All three now agree. A transaction you choose to exclude leaves all three.
Recurring dates that were missing or early
On the Calendar, in its export and on Cash Flow:
- “Last day” was read as the 28th of every month. It now lands on each month’s own last day, including February 29. “Last business day” and “Last Friday” now produce no date rather than the 28th.
- “15th”, “1st” and “22nd” produced no date at all, so those bills were missing from reminders and from the money held back before your next payday. A plain ordinal, such as “the 1st” or “every 15th of the month”, is now read as that day. Values such as “15th (rent)” or “15th or later” still get no date rather than a guessed one.
Imports
- A watched download must be complete before review. On Mac and Linux, a file still being written could reach review with a truncated amount. Detected files now offer Upload completed file: wait for the download to finish, then select it yourself. On Windows, direct review checks the detected file and protects its contents while saving the review copy. Once saved, a review keeps that copy even if the original download later changes.
- Undo keeps your later edits. Eligible transaction CSV imports into a single existing account now use Review undo. It removes the imported rows but keeps edits you made afterward, and anything it couldn’t undo is listed under Records not undone. Other import shapes keep Remove imported rows, whose button warns that it also removes rows you have since edited.
- A corrected row isn’t imported twice. If a later export overlaps a row you have corrected, the rest of the file comes in and the corrected row isn’t duplicated.
- Adjust mapping keeps your choices. Going back from the review used to clear the destination account and the profile name, and re-tick “Save this mapping”. All three now come back as you set them.
- Home now tells a captured file apart from a committed import. And a plain Date / Description / Amount header is no longer labelled as one particular bank’s format.
Two quiet failures
- A first record on a new install could vanish. On a fresh data folder, the first entry in several places reported success but wasn’t saved: business mileage, contractor payments, assets, home-office settings, monthly business results, subscriptions and balance transfers. The first save now keeps the record, and a save that fails shows an error. If an entry like that is missing, it was never saved; adding it again keeps it.
- Encryption skipped some files. Turning on at-rest encryption skipped a few files that already existed, your saved reports among them. It left them unencrypted while the privacy summary said “encrypted”. Turning encryption off could then leave those same files unreadable. Both directions now include them.
An interrupted upgrade waits for recovery
An interrupted conversion of an older household file could leave the app showing incomplete balances. An unfinished conversion now opens a recovery page instead of the financial pages, preserves the folder and directs you to support. If the records have changed or cannot be verified, it leaves every file in place.
New: correct a business record after you save it
Business mileage, contractor payments and depreciable assets used to be add-only. Now you can open a saved record from its Business panel and correct it, or delete it after an explicit confirmation; each change goes into a before-and-after history, which records the old values but is not an undo. The Business page leads with a task picker, mileage and contractor reports keep the year you chose and use that year’s rates and thresholds, and a refused form keeps what you typed with the error beside the field. Once you correct or delete a mileage trip, re-importing an overlapping export doesn’t bring the original back, and the import receipt says how many trips it left out for that reason.
New: plans side by side, and a test against history
- Compare plans. On Retirement, Save as a plan retains selected retirement, claiming, spending, saving, return and inflation assumptions under a name. Other inputs, including pensions and balances, follow the current household in every plan. Compare plans puts up to three columns side by side, drawn from saved plans and your current inputs. It shows success probability, the median portfolio entering retirement and at the end of the plan, the age savings run out on the steady-return path, claiming ages, and the inputs that differ. Each plan uses the same engine and the same random sequence, so the differences come from the inputs. The page doesn’t rank the plans.
- Historical backtest. On Retirement’s Projections tab, a new panel runs your plan through the actual market sequence starting in each year from 1928, using S&P 500 and 10-year Treasury returns and US inflation. It shows the share of start years that lasted to your planning age, the range of ending balances in today’s dollars, and the hardest start years for your plan. Headline results use only starts with enough recorded history; recent starts that reuse earlier returns are shown separately. The stock share defaults to 60/40 and can be changed for the view. Past markets don’t predict future ones, and the panel says so first.
New: category rules you can see and change
Trust & Data → Category rules shows your own rules and learned payees, and lets you write new rules or change a learned payee’s category. Built-in merchant suggestions are not listed there. A rule can match payee or description text, and can narrow by account, amount and direction. Preview matches shows which existing transactions would change before you save. Applying a rule to past transactions is a separate, unticked choice, and it can be undone unless those rows have changed since. A rule doesn’t change a category you chose yourself, a split, or a category from before GlidePath tracked where categories came from.
New: your money dates in your own calendar
Calendar has a new Add to your calendar panel. It downloads an .ics file of bill due dates, promo deadlines, subscription cancel-by dates, loan maturities, estimated-tax deadlines, recurring items, expected income and monthly-close reminders, each with a reminder three days before. By default, events carry generic titles such as “Bill payment due”, with no names or amounts. Include names and amounts is off until you tick it.
New: try your own bank file before you activate
When you start exploring in 1.26 before activating, the example household lives in its own folder. The financial files in your data folder aren’t read or written, and nothing from the example moves over when you activate. Preview your own bank file reads a CSV, Excel, OFX or QFX export in memory. It shows how the file would map, money in and out, rows it couldn’t read, suggested categories, and what importing the same file a second time would add. Then it discards the file. The page confirms This preview kept nothing.
Smaller notes
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An ACA quote stays as entered. A single-person plan could change an explicitly entered $18,000 annual benchmark to $9,000 when reloaded. Explicit quotes entered in 1.26 now keep their amount, including cents; older unconfirmed household defaults retain their existing adjustment. If you saved an explicit quote in an earlier version, re-enter it in 1.26 to mark it as your quoted amount.
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A new retirement plan waits for financial inputs. Until a plan has retirement savings or contributions, Tax Valley no longer presents conversion room or a tax-saving estimate as though those inputs were already there. Decision Studio and the balance-transfer payoff simulator also show an empty or not-applicable state for a plan without retirement money.
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First-use links reach the editor. The Business quick-start link opens the recurring profit-and-loss editor, and the 0% card form states its last-four requirement before you save.
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Your payment link on invoices. Add your own https payment link to your business profile or to one invoice, and it prints as “Pay online” on the invoice, its PDF and the email draft. GlidePath doesn’t process or see the payment.
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Account entry, Home and Import lead with the next task. Optional setup is folded behind named sections.
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Explore starts from situations. Above the full feature list, four paths — W-2 plus freelance work, equity compensation, retiring before Medicare, and 0% balance transfers — each lead to the tools that already handle them.
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Accessibility repairs: labelled transaction filters, budget fields and invoice lines; keyboard focus that follows added and removed invoice lines; and more readable utility buttons and badges in each theme.
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Charts stay in the app’s palette. In sensitivity bars, color now shows only whether a change helps or hurts.
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The example household uses invented names for its merchants and clients.
As always, GlidePath Money is an educational planning tool, not personalized financial, tax, investment, legal, or accounting advice. This release corrects how several figures are calculated. It does not file returns, calculate final tax, or replace your preparer’s judgment. Your financial data stays on your machine by default. The bank-file preview reads your file on this machine and keeps nothing. A calendar file you export goes wherever you choose to import it. Licence checks are required for a licensed install and re-check automatically; update checks are on automatically too. Neither sends financial data. The licence check sends your key, device ID, device name and operating system; the update check fetches the latest version number. Opt-in features such as the AI explainer send only what Trust Center names for them, and only when you use them.
