Reference table
State Tax on Retirement Income
The Roth conversion planner asks for two state rates: what your state charges on a conversion today, and what it will charge on withdrawals later. Look both up here. They are often different, because people move.
How to use it
Two numbers, not fifty states
Rate on the conversion
A Roth conversion is ordinary income in the year you make it. Use the traditional withdrawal rate for the state you live in now. This one is knowable — you know where you live.
Rate on the withdrawal
Use the rate for the state you expect to retire in. This one is a guess, and it is worth testing both ways. Converting in a high-tax state to withdraw in a no-tax state is a guaranteed loss that no federal bracket gain can recover.
Social Security column: only eight states tax Social Security benefits at all, and most of those exempt the majority of retirees through income thresholds.
Roth column: qualified Roth distributions are tax-free in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, because every state that levies an income tax follows the federal treatment. There is no state anywhere that taxes a qualified Roth withdrawal. That column is here so nobody has to wonder.
Watch the exclusions, not just the rate. A headline rate can badly overstate what you would actually pay. Georgia excludes $65,000 of retirement income at 65, New York exempts the first $20,000 per person, Kentucky $31,110. A retiree drawing modest amounts in those states often owes nothing despite a non-zero rate. Read the notes column before you type a number into the planner.
All states
Rates by state
| State | Social Security | Traditional withdrawals and conversions |
Roth withdrawals | Notes and exclusions |
|---|
What a single rate cannot show
Limits of this table
- Graduated brackets. States with progressive rates are shown at a representative rate. Your actual marginal rate depends on your income.
- Age and income tests. Several states exempt retirement income only above a certain age or below a certain income. Colorado's Social Security deduction applies in full at 65, Pennsylvania exempts distributions after 59½, and Iowa's exemption starts at 55.
- Early withdrawals. States that exempt qualified retirement income often still tax distributions taken before the qualifying age.
- Local income tax. Some states permit municipal income taxes on top of the state rate. Pennsylvania is the common example.
- Roth conversions specifically. Most states treat a conversion as ordinary income, but not all. Iowa names Roth conversion income as exempt for qualifying taxpayers. If your state exempts retirement income, confirm whether that exemption reaches conversions.
- Hard cliffs. Some exclusions drop in steps rather than phasing out smoothly. New Jersey's pension exclusion is the sharpest example — a joint filer whose conversion pushes total income past $100,000 drops from excluding up to $100,000 to excluding half of their retirement income, and past $150,000 the exclusion is gone entirely, with nothing in between to soften either step.
- Everything else. Sales, property, estate, and inheritance taxes are not here. A state with no income tax is not automatically a cheap state.
Sources and review
Where this came from
- Tax Foundation — state individual income tax rates and brackets, 2026, used to re-check every rate in the table on 2026-09-24.
- New Jersey Division of Taxation — retirement income exclusions, for the $100,000–$150,000 partial-exclusion percentages.
- Kiplinger — states that tax Social Security benefits in 2026, used for the eight Social Security states and their income thresholds.
- Kiplinger — states that will not tax retirement income in 2026, used for the no-income-tax states and the retirement-exemption states.
- Iowa Department of Revenue — retirement income tax guidance, which names Roth conversion income among exempt retirement income.
- Tax Foundation — state individual income tax rates, the recommended starting point for verifying any row before you rely on it.