Retirement Tax by State: All 50 States and DC, Side by Side

Enter one set of retirement income and see what every state would charge on it: the nine with no income tax, the eight that still tax Social Security, and the thirty-four in between, each with its own idea of what a pension exclusion is. The table ranks all fifty-one, and the section below it shows every line of every state's arithmetic, with the figure and the instruction page it came from. Federal tax is the same in every row and is shown once.

Two companion pages go deeper: the eight states that tax Social Security, rule by rule, and how much of your Social Security is taxable federally, worked through the IRS worksheet.

What the tool assumes

• Income is as entered: Social Security at the gross amount, pension and IRA at the taxable amount, other income as ordinary income. Nothing is added or subtracted that you did not enter.
• Standard deduction only, no dependents, no itemizing. Credits are included only where a state builds them into the ordinary computation for a retiree (a personal or exemption credit, a retirement-income credit, an age credit); credits that depend on property tax paid, rent, or income far below the examples here are left out and named in the state's notes.
• Pension income is treated as a private-employer pension. Federal, state, local government and military pensions are fully or partly exempt in many states; that treatment is not applied.
• IRA and 401(k) withdrawals are treated as taken after age 59½ (no early-distribution penalty) and, where a state asks, as distributions from a plan you have retired from.
• The federal $6,000 senior deduction (tax years 2025-2028) is applied at 65 and older and phased out at 6% of modified AGI over $75,000 (single) or $150,000 (joint). States that start from federal taxable income inherit it unless the state has said otherwise.
• On a joint return both spouses are the age you enter, both receive the aged add-ons, and per-person caps are doubled.
• Where a state had not published its 2026 figures when we checked, the 2025 figures are carried forward and the row is marked. Rate cuts already enacted for 2026 are applied. The federal 2026 figures are final.
• Local income taxes (Maryland counties, Indiana counties, New York City, and others), property tax, sales tax, and estate or inheritance tax are not included. A state that is cheap on this table may not be cheap overall.

Every state's rule for a retiree, in a sentence or two

Parameters used, with sources

The figures below are what the tool actually uses. They are loaded from the same files the calculation reads, so the page cannot show one thing and compute another. Status final means the state has published the year's figures; carried means the previous year's figures are used until the state publishes; partial means some figures for the year are published and the rest are carried. The eight states that tax Social Security use the parameter file of the eight-state tool, so the two pages cannot drift apart.

Test cases

Every combination below was computed independently by a reference implementation and by this page's code; the two must agree to the cent before the page is published. You can rerun that comparison in your browser right now.

Run the self-test

Sources

Corrections

If a rule or a figure is wrong, tell us. We fix it, update the checked date, and note the change here.

This tool shows what published tax rules do to the numbers you enter. It is not tax, legal or financial advice, and it does not know your situation. For a decision that matters, take the numbers to a professional who is licensed to advise you.