The states where inflation raised your taxes

A $65,000 single filer in Virginia who gets a 3.7% raise for 2026 pays $138 more Virginia income tax. A tax that grew with the raise would have grown 3.7%. The extra $28 is the price of a schedule whose dollar amounts never move, and Virginia's top bracket has started at the same $17,000 since 1990.

The 3.7% is how far the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose in the twelve months ending September 2026, to an index level of 336.940. A raise of that size leaves a worker exactly where they were in what their pay buys. In a state that indexes, the tax schedule moves too, and the bill on that unchanged real income stays put in real terms. In a state that writes its thresholds as fixed dollars, the raise is taxed at the margin while the deduction and the brackets below it stay where they were. That gap is bracket creep, and it is computable to the dollar.

Five schedules written in fixed dollars

We compared every bracket edge and deduction in our 2025 and 2026 tables for the states with a graduated income tax, then read the statutes behind the schedules that held still. In these five, the law itself prints the numbers and nothing adjusts them. The figures below are for persona P1, a single filer with $65,000 of wages and the standard deduction, before and after a raise to $67,405 ($65,000 × 1.037), both under 2026 law.

Each figure is computed to the cent and rounded for display, so a difference can sit a dollar away from the difference of two rounded columns.

The "beyond 3.7%" column is the increase minus 3.7% of the starting bill. For Virginia: the $2,405 raise is taxed entirely at 5.75%, which is $138; 3.7% of $2,977 is $110; the difference is $28. When the raise stays inside one bracket, creep is the raise multiplied by the gap between the filer's marginal rate and average rate, so it is largest where that gap is widest.

That is why New Jersey leads the column. Its schedule starts at 1.4% on the first $20,000 and does not reach 5.525% until $40,000, so our filer's average rate sits far below the 5.525% at which every dollar of the raise is taxed. The rate-schedule file the Division of Taxation still serves as current is headed "2020 NJ-1040 Tax Rate Schedules", and its single-filer table matches the seven bands in our 2025 and 2026 tables. The $1,000 exemption in our tables has not moved either.

Delaware sets its rates in 30 Del. C. §1102(a)(14), "for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2013": 2.2% above $2,000, rising to 6.6% above $60,000. Its standard deduction under §1108 has been $3,250 for every taxable period beginning after December 31, 1999. Our filer's taxable income is already past $60,000, so the whole raise is taxed at 6.6%.

Kansas rebuilt its tax in the 2024 special session and wrote each new amount "for tax year 2024, and all tax years thereafter": 5.2% up to $23,000 and 5.58% above it under K.S.A. 79-32,110, a $3,605 single standard deduction under 79-32,119 and a $9,160 personal exemption under 79-32,121.

Virginia has four bands under §58.1-320, and the section still prints the history of its top threshold: $12,000 before 1987, then $14,000, $15,000, $16,000, and "$17,000 for taxable years beginning on and after January 1, 1990." The standard deduction moves only when the General Assembly moves it. Section 58.1-322.03 sets $8,750 for 2025 and 2026, $9,200 for 2027 and $9,300 for 2028 and 2029.

Alabama's creep is the smallest of the five because its brackets are the lowest. §40-18-5 taxes a single filer at 2% on the first $500, 4% to $3,000 and 5% above that, so nearly all of a $65,000 income is already in the top band and the average rate sits close to the marginal one. A frozen schedule costs little when almost everything is taxed at the same rate.

Three of the five carry provisional 2026 data in our tables (Alabama, Kansas and New Jersey), meaning the entry does not yet rest on the state's final 2026 guidance. In each case the frozen amounts come from the statute, so final guidance would change these figures only if the legislature changed the law.

What thirty-six years at $17,000 cost

A one-year figure of $28 understates what a fixed threshold does over time, because the creep compounds. Virginia set its $17,000 top threshold for 1990. The CPI-U stood at 127.4 in January 1990 and 336.940 in September 2026, a factor of 2.645. Scale Virginia's bracket edges by it and they become $7,934, $13,224 and $44,961. Run the same $65,000 filer through those brackets, with the same $8,750 deduction, and the Virginia bill is $2,553. Under the brackets in force it is $2,977. The difference, $424 a year, is what thirty-six years of unindexed brackets cost a filer at this income, before counting the deduction.

Oklahoma froze a deduction at the 2017 federal figure

Oklahoma restructured its brackets for 2026: the second band now starts at $3,750, where it started at $1,000 in 2025. Its standard deduction did not change, and is not meant to. 68 O.S. §2358 replaces the federal deduction "for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2017" with a fixed $6,350 for a single filer. That was the 2017 federal amount. Carried forward on the CPI-U from 242.839 in January 2017 to 336.940 in September 2026, $6,350 would be $8,811. At Oklahoma's 4.50% top rate, the $2,461 the deduction has lost costs our filer $111 a year. The same section's $1,000 personal exemption is fixed as well.

Six schedules that move on their own

For contrast, these six graduated-rate states moved their bracket edges between 2025 and 2026 because a standing statute requires an annual adjustment. No bill was needed for the change.

Indexing is not uniform among them. Oregon's statute raises every bracket except one: "the rate brackets applicable to taxable income in excess of $125,000 may not be adjusted," so Oregon's top band begins at $125,000 in 2026 as it did in 2025. Maine measures prices with the chained CPI over twelve months ending June 30, while Missouri, Nebraska and Oregon use the CPI-U over twelve months ending August 31. All four take that window from the year before the tax year, so a schedule indexed for 2026 reflects inflation that was over before 2026 began.

Two states unchanged only in our tables

California's and Vermont's 2026 rows match their 2025 rows in our tables, and neither state freezes anything. R&TC §17041(h) has the Franchise Tax Board recompute California's brackets every year from the June-to-June change in the California Consumer Price Index, and 32 V.S.A. §5822(b)(2) has Vermont's Commissioner of Taxes adjust its tables annually in the federal manner. Both 2026 entries are provisional: last year's figures held in place until each state publishes its 2026 schedule. We do not report a creep figure for either, because the law will move the numbers the tables are still waiting on.

What these figures leave out

Every dollar figure is for a single filer with wage income and the standard deduction, from TaxMath's rate tables. Two fixed exemptions are not in those tables: Virginia's $930 per personal exemption under §58.1-322.03 and Oklahoma's $1,000. Both would lower our filer's bill slightly, and because both are fixed in dollars, neither would remove the creep. Graduated-rate states that held their bracket edges in 2026 while legislating a rate or deduction change are not counted among the five above; a two-year diff cannot separate their inflation effect from their policy change.

Virginia's next scheduled change is written into the same section that set 2026: after the $9,300 deduction for 2028 and 2029, §58.1-322.03 drops the single standard deduction to $3,000 for taxable years beginning on and after January 1, 2030.