About
We built the tool we couldn't find.
CliffEdge is a constraint visualizer for retirement income. It shows retirees exactly how much MAGI headroom they have before crossing a tax cliff — with every formula and step fully visible. No black boxes. No recommendations. Just the math.
Seven invisible thresholds. One wrong move.
Mass-affluent retirees managing their own IRAs face seven income thresholds that most tax software doesn't model. Cross one — through a Roth conversion, a one-time sale, or even a dividend — and the cost is sudden and permanent.
These cliffs are driven entirely by MAGI. A single Roth conversion can trigger all seven simultaneously.
ACA Subsidy Cliff
Pre-65 early retirees
IRMAA Medicare Surcharges
Age 65+, Medicare enrollees
Tax Torpedo
SS recipients planning Roth conversions
OBBBA Senior Deduction Phase-Out
Age 65+, MAGI $75K–$175K
Widow Penalty
Surviving spouses
Net Investment Income Tax
Higher earners with investment income
LTCG Rate Jump
Retirees with dividends or capital gains
What makes CliffEdge different.
Constraint visualization, not optimization
CliffEdge shows you where the lines are. It never tells you what to do. The goal is for you to understand your situation completely — not to trust our answer.
Show Your Work, always
Every calculation renders the full step-by-step math. No black boxes. No "our algorithm says." Every number traces back to a formula and a primary source.
Built on public data
Every threshold comes from IRS, CMS, and HHS publications, stored in versioned JSON tables we update annually. When you use CliffEdge, you can trace every number back to a primary source.
Local-first, forever
Calculations run in your browser. Your income data is never sent to our servers, whether you're using the calculator, saving a profile, or creating a Shared Link.