BNA Software — BNA Estate & Gift Tax Planner

From the June/July 2008 Review of Estate Planning Systems

The Estate & Gift Tax Planner from BNA Software is a planning solution designed for accountants, attorneys and tax professionals serving multiple clients. The system is among the most comprehensive on the market, offering tools for designing various estate scenarios that take the best advantage of existing and pending estate taxation legislation. It also enables the construction and planning of all forms of trusts and partnerships, along with generation-skipping transfers, family and charitable gifts, and offers support for interrelated calculations, special federal credits, and state inheritance/estate tax calculations. The program also offers extensive presentation tools for communicating plans and scenarios with clients. A single-user license for BNA Estate & Gift Tax Planner is priced at $1,495, with additional users costing $205 each. BNA also offers programs for fixed assets management, corporate tax analysis, sales and use tax compliance, and federal and state income tax planning. The company is one of only two vendors in this review (along with CCH) that also produces estate and gift tax return preparation systems.

Ease of Use/Basic Functionality -- 5 Stars
At startup, the BNA Estate & Gift Tax Planner opens to an Analysis Wizard, which jumpstarts the creation of a client plan by offering quick access to templates that, for married clients, include Prior Transfer Credits, Insurance Trust Plans, Excluded Gifts, FLPs, QPRT-GRITs and GSTs. For single clients, these templates are Insurance Trust Plan, Private Annuity Plan, SCIN, GRIT, CRAT and GST. Users also have the option to simply start a blank custom plan. The templates generally start out with three cases (scenarios) each, one showing the no plan “worst case scenario,” one with the marital deduction clause (if applicable), and the third with plan-specific options applied.

When starting one of the plans, the Analysis Wizard guides the user through data entry by opening spreadsheet worksheets for entering client and spouse (if applicable) gross liquid and non-liquid assets, then a worksheet for Debts, Expenses and Rates, and finally a Summary view. The data is then automatically populated onto the program’s Main Worksheet, which gives an excellent view of all plans and data in a spreadsheet layout with drilldown access to data and subsidiary worksheets, such as charitable deductions, marital deductions and tax credits. Calculations are automatically updated throughout the worksheet as changes are made.

Accompanying the Main Worksheet on the interface is a vertical menu that allows jumping to specific data-entry worksheets, and also displays summary data for Plan Assumptions, Client Information and other options. An array of icons and pull-down menus across the top of the screen make it very easy to access primary system functions, including worksheets, calculators, notes, reports, flowcharts and a toggle to reverse the order of death. Additionally, many of the program’s presentation functions are also immediately available.