State Rate Changes Taking Effect in 2026, Ranked by What They Are Worth

Fifteen states changed an individual income tax rate for tax year 2026, the return filed in 2027. Run one single filer with $65,000 of wages through each state's 2025 and 2026 tables and the changes run from $341 a year in Montana down to nothing in Maine, whose one rate change begins at a million dollars of taxable income.

Two earlier pieces cover the rates themselves: which top rates moved for 2026, and the twenty states that cut between 2022 and 2026. This one puts every 2026 rate change in a single order, by the measure a filer can spend.

The ranking

The filer is TaxMath's first persona: single, one W-2, $65,000 of wages, and the standard deduction or whatever the state uses in its place. Each figure is that filer's 2026 state tax minus the 2025 state tax, computed from TaxMath's rate tables with the same bracket arithmetic the calculator runs. A minus sign is a cut.

The "rate schedule alone" column holds the 2026 deduction fixed and swaps the 2025 brackets back in, so the gap between it and the first column is what the deduction did. The last money column repeats the run at $185,000 of wages, which is persona P3 without its capital gains.

Thirteen rows come straight from the tables. Ohio and Maine are ranked from their statutes, for reasons set out at the end, and neither one's computed figure is printed.

The order at $185,000 is a different list. Nebraska climbs from fifth to first at $981, Kentucky to second, and Montana falls to fifth. A cut to the rate on the top band pays in proportion to the income above that band's floor, and our $65,000 filer has little of it in most states.

Montana's cut is mostly a moved line

House Bill 337 lowered Montana's top rate from 5.90% to 5.65%, and it did something worth more to a middle income: it moved the point where that rate starts. In 2025 the upper band began at $21,100 of taxable income. For 2026 the Department of Revenue prints the single filer's 4.7% band running from $0.00 to $47,500, with 5.65% only above it.

Montana starts from federal taxable income, so our filer's $65,000 becomes $48,900 after the $16,100 federal standard deduction. Only $1,400 of that crosses $47,500, so the quarter-point cut in the top rate touches almost nothing. In 2025 the same filer had $49,250 of taxable income and $28,150 of it sat above $21,100, taxed at 5.90%. The schedule change is worth −$320 on its own; the rest of the row is the federal deduction rising from $15,750.

South Carolina's rate cut is the biggest one, and the filer keeps less than half

On its rate schedule alone, South Carolina's 2026 change is worth −$773 to our filer, more than twice Montana's whole row. The same act takes $454 of it back.

H. 4216, ratified on March 25, 2026, rewrote both halves of the return. The schedule is 1.99% below $30,000, and at $30,000 or more, 5.21% of income minus $966. It also replaced the federal standard deduction, which South Carolina used in 2025 because its return started from federal taxable income, with a South Carolina Income Adjusted Deduction of $15,000 for a single filer. The act reduces that deduction by a fraction: federal adjusted gross income above $40,000, divided by $55,000. A $40,000 filer keeps all of it. Our $65,000 filer loses five-elevenths of it. At $95,000 it is gone. The Department of Revenue's own summary says the deduction "may be reduced based on income as described in the bill" and that the change is effective beginning with the 2026 tax year.

So the value of South Carolina's change falls as income rises through the phase-out, and then rises again once the deduction has nothing left to lose. It is worth −$316 at $40,000, −$319 at $65,000, −$169 at $100,000, and −$841 at $185,000.

Georgia's deduction did more than its rate

Georgia's House Bill 463 changed two numbers in one act, applicable to taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2026: the rate, from 5.19% to 4.99%, and the single filer's standard deduction, from $12,000 to $15,000. The Department of Revenue states both on its tax updates page.

The rate cut is worth −$100 to our filer. The larger deduction is worth another $156. Georgia and South Carolina each rewrote the deduction in the same act that cut the rate, and they moved it in opposite directions.

Five flat-rate cuts, priced by the points

Where a state charges one rate on nearly every dollar, the size of the cut decides the order and the arithmetic is close to rate times income.

• Kentucky, HB 1 of 2025: "from four percent to 3.5 percent for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2026." Half a point is the largest flat cut of the year, worth $312 at $65,000.
• Mississippi, HB 531 of 2022: 4.4% for calendar year 2025 on taxable income above $10,000, and 4% "for calendar year 2026 and all calendar years thereafter." A cut legislated four years before it arrived.
• North Carolina: the Department of Revenue gives 4.25% for 2025 and 3.99% for taxable years after 2025.
• Indiana: the Department of Revenue's tax chapter lowers the rate to 3% for 2025 and 2.95% for 2026. Indiana's county income taxes are outside our tables and this comparison.
• Utah, SB 60: 4.5% to 4.45%, in a bill that took effect May 6, 2026 with "retrospective operation for a taxable year beginning on or after January 1, 2026."

Indiana and Utah tie at $32, five hundredths of a point on nearly the whole wage.

Graduated schedules, cut in different places

Nebraska is the cut that grows fastest with income. Section 77-2715.03 sets rate three and rate four of the schedule at the same 4.55% for taxable years beginning in 2026, down from 5.01% and 5.20%, so the table's four bands become three and everything above $24,760 is taxed at 4.55%.

Oklahoma's HB 2764 rebuilt the whole schedule: 0% on the first $3,750, 2.5% on the next $1,150, 3.5% on the next $2,300, and 4.5% on the remainder, replacing six bands that topped out at 4.75%.

West Virginia cut every bracket by the same 5%. SB 392 was signed on March 31, 2026, and the Tax Division's schedule now ends at $1,950.50 plus 4.58% of the excess over $60,000, retroactive to January 1.

Arkansas cut its top band from 3.90% to 3.70% under Act 2 of the 2026 First Extraordinary Session. Its row is provisional in our tables: the figure rests on the act alone.

New York cut low and left the top alone. The Department of Taxation and Finance revised its 2026 schedules "to reflect certain income tax rate reductions enacted under Chapter 59 of the Laws of 2025 (Part A)," and its 2026 single schedule now opens at 3.90% and reaches 5.90% at $80,650. In our tables the four brackets from $215,400 up keep their 2025 rates. Our filer's $57,000 of New York taxable income sits in the 5.40% band, so the cut reaches every dollar of it and is still worth only $57. New York City and Yonkers income taxes are outside our tables.

Ohio and Maine, ranked from the statute

Ohio removed the 3.125% band that began at $100,000. Ohio Revised Code §5747.02 charged $342.00 plus 2.75% of the excess over $26,050 in 2025, and charges $332.00 plus the same 2.75% over the same $26,050 for 2026. For anyone between $26,050 and $100,000 of Ohio taxable income the change is exactly $10. Our Ohio entry carries the rates and not those fixed dollar amounts, so the tables compute $0 at $65,000 and cannot be trusted above $100,000, where the 2025 fixed amount for the top band is not the sum of the bands beneath it. We rank Ohio on the statute's $10 and print no Ohio figure for $185,000.

Maine added a 2% surcharge on Maine taxable income above $1,000,000 for a single filer, through the supplemental budget LD 2212, signed April 10, 2026. Every bracket below that line kept its 2025 rate. The rate change is therefore worth exactly $0 to both of our filers, and to anyone else with Maine taxable income at or below $1,000,000. Our tables do show a small Maine decrease, from indexed brackets, but our Maine entry omits the personal exemption, so that figure is not printed here.

What the ranking leaves out

The fifteen rows are rate changes. A state that only indexed its brackets or raised a deduction changed what our filer owes without changing a rate, and those states are counted in the state-by-state account of what changed for 2026. Across all 51 jurisdictions, 28 carry final 2026 figures in our tables and 23 are still provisional; which ones, and what each is waiting on, is on the 2026 data status board.

South Carolina is the row to watch as income rises. Past $95,000 of federal adjusted gross income the new deduction is gone, and the state that tops the list on its rate schedule returns $169 to a $100,000 earner, less than Georgia's $326 or Nebraska's $428 at the same income.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional for guidance specific to your situation.