The federal government income tax collected by the IRS applies to all Americans regardless of where you live, but the rules for state income tax rates and how you pay taxes can be vastly different from those of the IRS depending on your state’s income tax structure. State income tax systems fall into three broad categories: fixed or flat income taxes, progressive income taxes, and no income taxes.
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Fixed rates or flat rates, as the name implies, have a single tax bracket regardless of how much you make. Progressive income tax, the most commonly used system, refers to tax rates that increase incrementally for people with more taxable income. Some states, like Alaska and Florida, have high sales tax or property taxes to compensate for the fact that they are among the few states with no income tax.
Here’s what you need to know about state income tax rates, including states with no income tax.
States With Flat Tax Rates
With flat tax rates, you pay the same tax rate no matter how much income you have. Many states have moved away from flat-tax structures because critics claim that they unfairly burden low- and middle-class taxpayers. Illinois, however, which imposes a 3.75 percent fixed tax, has a flat tax because when the tax was first implemented, it was unclear whether a progressive income tax was constitutional under the state constitution, and the law hasn’t been changed since then.
Here are the states that impose a flat tax rate on their citizens:
| State | Single Filer Rates | Married Jointly Rates |
| Colorado | 4.63% | 4.63% |
| Illinois | 4.95% | 4.95% |
| Indiana | 3.23% | 3.23% |
| Massachusetts | 5.10% | 5.10% |
| Michigan | 4.25% | 4.25% |
| New Hampshire | 5.00% | 5.00% |
| North Carolina | 5.50% | 5.50% |
| Pennsylvania | 3.07% | 3.07% |
| Tennessee | 5.00% | 5.00% |
| Utah | 5.00% | 5.00% |
| Source: State tax websites | ||
States With Progressive Tax Rates
With progressive tax rates, most states have separate tax brackets that depend on how much you earn. The idea is that people in higher income brackets can afford to pay more taxes. More brackets can lead to more complexity.
Some states have just a few brackets, like Alabama or Rhode Island, which have just three each. California and Missouri both tip the scales with 10 different tax rates. And sometimes a state’s tax brackets are as easy as 1, 2, 3, like Montana, where the first five tax brackets are 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent and 5 percent.
In other states, tax bracketing looks like budgeting to the penny. Take Arizona, for example, which has tax brackets at an exacting 2.59 percent, 2.88 percent, 3.36 percent, 4.24 percent and 4.54 percent.