I run a small data project called StateTakeHome, where every tax rate is pulled from official publications (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, SSA, each state's Department of Revenue) and labeled with its tax-year vintage. This week I ran the full 2026 engine across all 50 states + DC — 11 income levels, 2 filing statuses, 1,122 computed observations — and published the whole thing as an open dataset (CC BY 4.0).
Here's what a single filer earning $100,000 actually keeps in 2026, after federal tax, state tax and FICA.
The headline numbers
| Rank | State | Take-home (annual) | Effective total tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (9-way tie) | Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming | $79,180 | 20.8% |
| 10 | North Dakota | $78,489 | 21.5% |
| 47 | District of Columbia | $73,649 | 26.4% |
| 48 | Maine | $73,147 | 26.9% |
| 49 | Hawaii | $73,023 | 27.0% |
| 50 | California | $72,657 | 27.3% |
| 51 | Oregon | $70,904 | 29.1% |
The spread between the nine no-income-tax states and Oregon is $8,276 every year — about $690 a month, on the exact same salary.
Three things that surprised me
1. Oregon is a bigger outlier than California. Everyone talks about California taxes, but at $100k the marginal California rate is still climbing, while Oregon's 8.75% bracket starts at just $10,200 of taxable income. Oregon also has no sales tax — which this dataset doesn't measure — but on pure paycheck math, Oregon takes the most.
2. California's real differentiator isn't the brackets — it's SDI. Since 2024 (SB 951), California's 1.3% State Disability Insurance applies to every dollar of wages, uncapped. At $100k that's $1,300 on top of income tax; at $500k it's $6,500. Most calculators I audited still apply the old cap.
3. The "no-tax" tie hides local differences. Nine states tie at $79,180 because they levy no state income tax on wages. What separates them in real life is property tax (New Hampshire ~1.8% effective vs Nevada ~0.5%) and sales tax — which is why we publish those as separate datasets.
Methodology, in one paragraph
One deterministic engine, jurisdiction data as inputs: 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction (Rev. Proc. 2025-32, Pub 15-T method), Social Security to the 2026 SSA wage base, Medicare + the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax, state brackets/deductions verified DOR by DOR (including 2026 legislative changes like Georgia H.B. 111 and South Carolina H.4216), plus state payroll extras like California SDI. Every figure carries an explicit 2026 vintage. Full write-up: statetakehome.com/methodology.
Get the data
The full dataset (1,122 rows: 51 jurisdictions × 11 incomes × 2 filing statuses) and the 51-state ranking are free to download and reuse, including commercially, with attribution:
→ statetakehome.com/data (CC BY 4.0)
And if you just want your own number: every state has an interactive calculator, e.g. Texas or California — the inputs never leave your browser.
If you spot a rate that doesn't match its official source, tell me — verified corrections ship within 48 hours. That's the whole point of the project.
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