I’ll believe the tax calculator when the cash is in my bank account. You can hope for change all you want but he’s just another politician. How’s Obama going to pay for all of his new programs with this economic crisis? By taxing the upper middle class ($250,000+)? When companies start sending their business overseas to take advantage of lower tax rates, Obama will change his tune. Venture capitalists will be reluctant to fund web projects with FAT TAXES? Wise up, HOPE all you want but nothing will CHANGE.

Appreciate the feedback Quetzal. UX Mag is not a political site and the post is not meant as an endorsement. What I was impressed with was the design and user experience of the calculator and its ability to simplify an issue.

“UX Mag is not a political site” you are just looking at functionality. It is a calculator. The interaction with a calculator is not that impressive. You have not taken into account that the calculator may not even be displaying correct information? This is a really weak attempt trying not to be political. For god sake you have Al Gore on the homepage saying: “Trust me on this. If audiences had an unlimited attention span, I’d be in my second term as President.”

It breaks one of the 5 golden rules of usability by playing musack to me without any choice.

The calculator told me there was going to be an international crisis in 6 months.

I like it. Of course the user is left to wonder how accurate it is, but it does it’s job.

The UI could be improved to help answer what people may think of as obvious qu’s (when it asked me about education expenses, do loans still count? How do you determine who is a dependent?). Few other nitpicks as well.

Mr. Mann fails to disclose the fact that he has donated money to the Obama campaign. I would hardly consider his opinion of Obama’s web site impartial.

@John Hyde

We did that because the higher-ups wanted that you tube video on the page, but the screenshot randomly assigned to the video by You Tube’s servers was rather….unfortunate.

But I agree, I hate it when a site starts playing any audio without my prompting.