Log 09: TaxSnap — 37 Updates, One Deployment

Pay Calculator — A completely new tab. Enter an hourly rate and hours per week, toggle overtime, pick a student loan plan. Full breakdown: gross, income tax, NI (8% employee rate), student loan deductions — net take-home per week, 4-week, month, and year.

Income Frequency Selector — Annual, Monthly, 4-Weekly, or Weekly on both income and expenses. Auto-converts to annual with a blue hint like “= £85,000/year” so you always know what the annualised figure is.

User Dashboard — Saved bills grouped by category plus saved forecasts with profit, tax, and take-home at a glance. Click any forecast to reload it instantly. Your financial history, persisted.

Salary Comparison — Side-by-side breakdown of two salaries with net difference per period. Useful for comparing a job offer against your current role, or modelling a pay rise.

Pension Contributions — Percentage of salary or a fixed amount, deducted pre-tax via salary sacrifice. See the real impact on take-home before committing to a contribution level.

Reverse Calculator (Target Take-Home) — Enter the net income you want to take home, and TaxSnap works backwards to give you the exact gross you’d need to earn. Solves the “how much do I need to invoice?” question.

Tax Code Override — BR, 0T, D0, D1, or any custom code. Adjusts personal allowance and tax bands automatically. Essential for anyone not on the standard 1257L.

Student Loan Plans — Plan 1, 2, 4, and 5 with correct thresholds. Deducts 9% above the relevant threshold so the take-home figure is actually accurate for graduates.

Visual Tax Breakdown — A colour-coded stacked bar showing each income band: tax-free (green), 20% basic rate (blue), 40% higher rate (yellow), 45% additional rate (red). Displays the amount in each band and the tax paid on it.

Budget Auto-Fill from Forecast — A green “💰 Use my forecast: £X,XXX/month” button. One click fills in your take-home income on the budget tab. No re-typing numbers.

PDF Export — Dark-themed, branded A4 PDF with summary cards, full tax breakdown with colour-coded dots, income band bar, monthly and weekly figures, and TaxSnap branding. Instant download — hand it to your accountant or save it for your records.

UK Tax Codes Explained — 12 codes broken down in plain English: 1257L, 1185L, BR, D0, D1, 0T, K475, NT, S1257L, C1257L, 1257M, and 1131N. Plus Quick Tips on emergency codes and when to contact HMRC.

Student Loan Helper Tooltips — A [?] button next to each plan with a plain-English description of what the plan means, who’s on it, and what the threshold is.

reCAPTCHA v2 — Both login and register forms now require reCAPTCHA with full server-side verification. Stops automated signups and brute-force attempts.

Password Reset Flow — Secure 32-byte token with 1-hour expiry. Branded HTML email with a reset link. New password plus confirm form. Tokens are single-use. Rate-limited to prevent abuse. Doesn’t reveal whether an email address exists in the system — no enumeration attacks.

Confirm Password on Register — Simple but critical. Prevents typos on signup that lock people out of their own account.

Cookie Consent: Accept + Decline — Decline genuinely disables non-essential tracking. UK GDPR and ICO compliant — not a dark pattern, an actual choice.

Admin Dashboard — Gated panel visible only to the admin email. Shows user count, total records, and lead submissions. Clean overview without exposing anything to regular users.

Canonical URL fixed — Was pointing to taxsnap.cc, now correctly set to ts.taxsnap.cc. Search engines were indexing the wrong domain.

OG URL + OG image domain fixed — Social previews now resolve to the correct domain with the right image.

Schema.org URL corrected — Structured data now references the live domain, not the old one.

Twitter Card meta tags added — summary_large_image format. Sharing on X/Twitter now shows a proper preview card.

Robots meta tag added — Explicit index/follow directive so crawlers know the page is meant to be indexed.

app.js loads with defer — Was render-blocking. Now deferred so the page paints before the script executes. Measurable improvement in First Contentful Paint.

Referrer-Policy header added — Controls what referrer information is sent when navigating away. Privacy and security baseline.

Proper 1200×630 OG image — Created and uploaded. Social shares now display a crisp, correctly-sized preview image.

Sitemap expanded — From 2 URLs to 3, with lastmod dates. Search engines can now discover and prioritise all public pages.

PNG favicon fallback — Added alongside the SVG. Older browsers and bookmark bars that don’t support SVG favicons now display correctly.

Lead form saves to database — Was console.log only. Now properly stores name, email, phone, profit, and tax to the database. Leads were being captured and thrown away.

£0/month budget display removed — Instead of showing a meaningless zero, it now shows a “Run a tax forecast first” link that takes you to the right place.

Privacy page: contact email visible — Now displays hello@sewell.ink. ICO compliance requires a visible contact method.

Privacy page: proper header with navigation — Logo plus links back to the app. Was a dead-end page with no way back.

Wider income input fields — Better padding and focus states. The fields were cramped and hard to click on mobile.

Footer link goes to / — Was linking to an external marketing page. Now stays within the app.

Loading states on Forecast button — Shows “⏳ Calculating…” and disables the button while processing. Prevents double-clicks and gives feedback that something is happening.

Class 2 NI precision — Now shows £179.40 instead of the rounded £179. Small number, but accuracy matters when you’re calculating tax.

Budget sticky CTA styles — The call-to-action on the budget tab now sticks properly during scroll, with correct styling across screen sizes.