Using Prior year's filing to do what if scenarios to estimate/plan next year's taxes?

I do my taxes using TurboTax and am wondering if after filing I save a second copy of the return under another name i.e.".......whatif..........". Would this work to then use to run what if scenarios say for things like what would the tax impact be if I recognized a capital gain of $X or I started to claim Social Security or IRA distributions etc etc?

posted

I've done this for years, and it does help us guesstimate whether we should make changes. We make substantial money thru our investments, which are not captured by normal withholding. By making a projection, it helps us adjust our withholding, or occasionally we've made estimated tax payments. We also used this method to estimate the impact of various retirement dates.
Won't help for 2017 to 2018 though - too many changes to the tax code!