Start from the gift they already want to make.
CharitableEdge starts from what a client has already decided to give and finds the most efficient way to give it: QCD, bunching, a donor-advised fund, or a charitable remainder trust, compared side by side. Then it shows what happens to everything else. Charitable intent first, tax efficiency second.
Live now and included in the Complete Bundle.
Not every dollar is equally efficient to give.
An IRA dollar given as a QCD never reaches taxable income. An appreciated stock given to a donor-advised fund avoids the capital gain. The same gift costs a client very different amounts depending on which dollars fund it, so CharitableEdge finds the most efficient source for the gift already intended, then shows what remains. What remains is not a problem to be solved. A client may be entirely comfortable paying tax on money that was never going to charity.
For a QCD, it reads what the annual cap leaves behind. The engine projects giving, growth, and Required Minimum Distributions year by year, isolates the balance the QCD cap leaves behind, and discounts it back to today's dollars.
That year-one figure is a number you can put in front of the client: the balance giving will not reach, and, if the client wants it off an heir's return, the amount a Roth conversion would address.
Even giving the maximum every year, a large IRA can finish the horizon with hundreds of thousands of dollars the cap never reached. CharitableEdge names that number and its present-day equivalent in one view.
Give from the right dollars
What leaves for charity from the most efficient source, within each strategy's own limits.
What remains
The balance giving will not reach, in future and present-day dollars.
Reposition, if it fits
If a conversion is worth modeling, hand the figure to RothEdge, where the comparison shows whether it helps.
A QCD only comes from the IRA the client actually owns.
For married couples CharitableEdge models each spouse's IRA separately. A gift is bounded by the account it comes from and each spouse's own annual limit, so the plan you present is one a client can legally execute, not a household average that overstates what is possible.
Per-owner modeling
Client and spouse IRAs carry their own balances, Required Minimum Distributions, and QCD limits across the full horizon. A spouse with no IRA is never credited a gift they cannot make.
Your choice of view
Switch to a combined household view when you want the aggregate. Either way each spouse's gift stays capped at their own balance, so the totals are always defensible.
The rules, kept current
The annual limit is projected forward with inflation instead of frozen, the age 70½ test is exact, and the OBBBA senior deduction and Social Security taxation are carried year by year.
Medicare in the picture
Each year is checked against IRMAA tiers on the income that actually counts, so you can show where a QCD keeps a client under a surcharge threshold and where it does not.
One screen, the whole comparison.
Each strategy's estimated tax benefit is measured against its own baseline and shown side by side, in the terms clients understand.
It talks to RothEdge, both directions.
CharitableEdge reads the same shared client profile as RothEdge and ProbateEdge, so a client entered once is ready everywhere. When the residual points to a conversion, hand it off without re-keying a single figure.
CharitableEdge
Surfaces the residual and its convert-now value, then sends that exact amount to RothEdge as a starting scenario.
RothEdge
Model a QCD from any Roth conversation with one button, and drop straight back into CharitableEdge with the client's data intact.
One giving goal, four ways to fund it.
CharitableEdge runs each strategy against the same client and the same intent, measures each against its own baseline, and shows them side by side so you can show which one fits and why the others do not.
Qualified Charitable Distributions
Satisfy the RMD directly from the IRA, without the distribution reaching taxable income.
Deduction Bunching
Alternate itemizing and standard-deduction years so the giving lands where it is worth most.
Donor-Advised Funds
Cash and appreciated-stock funding against the AGI ceilings, with carryforward.
Charitable Remainder Trusts
CRAT and CRUT income streams with the four-tier classification.
Show them the most efficient way to give what they already planned.
Pull up a client, set the giving plan, and read the comparison in seconds.