What is Net Legacy and how is it calculated?
Net Legacy is ProjectionLab’s estimate of the net value of your estate available for distribution at the end of your plan. It represents the full pool that gets distributed – both to heirs and, if configured, to charity.
Net Legacy vs Legacy
- Legacy – your raw net worth at the end of the plan, before any estate-settlement math.
- Net Legacy – Legacy minus the obligations that must be paid first: income taxes on inherited accounts, estate or inheritance tax, real-estate liquidation costs, administrative costs, debt payoff, and any final-year tax balance.
Heirs vs charity
Net Legacy is the pool that gets distributed. If you’ve configured a Charitable Giving percentage, PL splits Net Legacy into two streams:
- Charitable Giving – the portion donated to charity.
- To Heirs – the remainder.
The Estate page’s Sankey visualizes this split with separate terminal nodes for “To Heirs” and “Charitable Giving,” both drawn from the Net Legacy pool.
Where to find it
- Estate page – Net Legacy appears as a headline metric card. The Sankey below it shows the full flow from gross assets down to each terminal node.
- Compare Mode – Net Legacy is available as a comparison metric when comparing plans or strategies.
- Analysis tables – strategy-comparison tables (for example, the Roth Conversions page) include Legacy and Net Legacy columns.
Adjusting the assumptions
Click the Net Legacy card on the Estate page to open the Estate Settings drawer. From there you can adjust:
- Tax-Deferred Account Tax Rate – income tax applied to distributions from inherited 401(k), traditional IRA, and similar accounts.
- Taxable Accounts – capital gains rate applied to embedded gains in taxable and crypto accounts when your country does not grant a stepped-up basis. In countries that do, this rate is effectively ignored for those accounts.
- Liquidation Costs – realtor and closing costs when real estate or physical assets are sold.
- Charitable Giving – see Charitable Giving.
- Administrative Costs – probate, legal, and executor fees as a percentage of the gross estate.
Estate or inheritance tax rules are applied automatically based on your plan’s country. Changing any setting recalculates Net Legacy and the Sankey in real time.
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