2026 US State Tax Rankings
PlainTaxCalc indexes all 51 U.S. tax jurisdictions (50 states plus the District of Columbia) by their 2026 individual income tax schedules, drawing on each state Department of Revenue annual rate bulletin and cross-referenced against the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income program covering more than 165,000,000 returns filed in tax year 2024. This rankings hub surfaces three classes of ranking, by raw top marginal rate, by effective burden at a $100,000 single-filer baseline, and by per-state notes covering filing-status structure, standard deduction treatment, and special-category rate breaks. The underlying dataset refreshes whenever a state legislature enacts a bracket change; cross-state comparisons here reflect the most recently compiled figures.
Tax-burden rankings differ depending on which income tier you anchor on. At the $50,000 AGI tier most US states cluster within a narrow band because standard-deduction subtraction and the bottom-bracket structure compress effective rates. At the $100,000 AGI tier the progressive states begin to separate sharply from the flat-rate states. At the $200,000+ AGI tier the spread becomes material, the highest-top-rate states like California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon impose 8-13% effective rates while the seven no-income-tax states (Florida, Texas, Washington, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska) impose zero. Burdens are pre-computed at three reference tiers for the single-filer baseline; the rankings hub indexes those figures alongside the raw bracket data for each state.
Top 10 Lowest-Burden States at $100K Single Filer
Ranked from lowest to highest state tax owed at $100,000 single-filer 2026 taxable income, the nine no-income-tax jurisdictions plus the lowest-rate flat states.
Top 10 Highest-Burden States at $100K Single Filer
Ranked from highest to lowest state tax owed at $100,000 single-filer 2026 taxable income, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and other top-rate states.
Best States for $200K+ Earners
Ranked comparison of state tax burden at $200,000 single-filer 2026 taxable income, where progressive bracket schedules begin to diverge sharply between states.
All 51 jurisdictions, ranked by top marginal rate
Every US tax jurisdiction PlainTaxCalc covers, sorted by top marginal individual income tax rate. The states with no broad-based income tax are listed in a separate block below; New Hampshire and Tennessee remain on the no-income-tax list because their historical interest-and-dividends taxes are now fully or partially phased out.
No broad-based income tax
These jurisdictions levy no broad-based individual income tax for the 2026 tax year. Households in these states still face federal income tax, FICA payroll tax, and other state-level taxes (sales, property, excise) which often offset the absence of an income tax.
Every figure on PlainTaxCalc is rendered directly from IRS Revenue Procedure and state Department of Revenue data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on IRS Revenue Procedure and state Department of Revenue data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.