Last checked 2026-11-07. State tax law changes between sessions and sometimes between years — confirm your own state's rules on its revenue department's site before you rely on any list, including this one.
Put your salary into the calculator on this page to see the federal side of the arithmetic; the state line is a separate number you add to it yourself.
The eight states are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. That is the count the Tax Foundation publishes for 2026, and the sentence it uses is plain: eight states "levy no individual income tax at all."
The number moves when a state finishes removing a tax. New Hampshire repealed its interest and dividends tax as of 2025, which is what places it among the eight (Tax Foundation). A list compiled before that date can look correct and still disagree with a list compiled after it.
The other mover is Washington.
Washington does not tax wages. It does tax capital gains income. The Tax Foundation's own note draws the line precisely: "Washington taxes capital gains income only," while Missouri exempts capital gains income from its income tax.
That single sentence is the whole of the "nine states" dispute. If your definition is "no tax on the wages I earn at a job," Washington qualifies and you get nine. If your definition is "no individual income tax of any kind," Washington does not qualify and you get eight.
Neither definition is wrong. What is wrong is quoting one number while describing the other, which is how a reader ends up planning a move around a tax that will still apply to part of their income.
One more piece of the same puzzle, pointing the other way: a state can tax some kinds of income and exempt others, and an exemption is not the same thing as never having the tax. Only the eight states have no tax to carve out of.
It does not change your federal tax. Federal brackets, the standard deduction and payroll taxes apply wherever you live. Our federal calculator returns the same federal figures for a salary in Texas as for the same salary in California.
It does not mean you pay no state tax. States fund themselves through some mix of sales tax, property tax, excise taxes and fees, and a state that skips the income tax is generally leaning harder on one or more of the others. That trade is a policy choice, not an absence of cost.
It does not mean your paycheck is simple. Local taxes, city or county income taxes, and state disability or paid-leave contributions are separate instruments that can exist in a state with no income tax, and they are outside the scope of this page.
The practical upshot: a state income tax line is one line on a long list, and the list is different in every state. Comparing two states on the income tax alone is comparing one line of two different documents.
Our suggestion is to set aside a few minutes and start at the state's own revenue department, not at a listicle. The Tax Foundation table is a useful index of where to look, and it is transparent about being a compilation — the primary source is always the statute or the state's published form and instructions.
Then answer three questions:
Only after those three are answered does a state-to-state comparison mean anything.
Three patterns account for most of it.
Mixing years. A list published before a state's repeal will not match a list published after it, because the count depends on the law in force on the date of the list. Always look for the year attached to a list of state rates.
Mixing definitions. "No income tax" can mean no tax on wages, no tax on any individual income, or no tax on anything at all. The eight-state count uses the second meaning.
Mixing levels. State income tax, local income tax and payroll contributions are three different things collected by three different authorities. A state with no income tax can still have a city income tax.
Suppose you are comparing two offers at the same salary in two different states. The federal tax, Social Security and Medicare are identical in both. So the comparison reduces to: state income tax plus local taxes plus the cost differences you care about — housing, property tax, sales tax.
That is a shorter list than most people expect, and it is the list that actually decides the answer. Build it once, with your own salary, and the "no income tax" headline becomes a single input rather than the conclusion.
If you are weighing a move to one of the eight, write down what you would pay instead. The list tells you where a tax is missing. It does not tell you what fills the space.
Put your own salary into the calculator on this page and check the federal side, then add your state's line yourself — the comparison is only as good as the second number.
Updated 2026-11-08 · Sources retrieved 2026-11-07
This is a general explanation of how state income taxes are counted, not tax or relocation advice. The state list is a compilation published by a private research organization; each state's own statutes and forms are the primary source. This page does not model state, local or payroll taxes, and nothing here changes the federal figures the calculator on this page produces. For anything you will act on, check your state's revenue department or ask a tax professional.
We check every report against the official source and update the page. See how on our Corrections.