What Arkansas actually takes from a 401(k) withdrawal, a pension, and Social Security — in dollars, against the state’s own brackets and exclusions rather than a yes-or-no list.
Long-term index-fund growth after expense-ratio drag — and what your state takes from the gains at withdrawal.
When your RMDs start under SECURE 2.0, how much this year's is, and what missing it costs.
2026 limits, employer match, the 60-63 super catch-up, and whether the Roth catch-up mandate applies to you.
A required minimum distribution is ordinary income, taxed at your top bracket and often pushing you into the next one. Here is the federal tax on RMDs from $20,000 to $75,000 at different income levels, why the default 10% withholding usually leaves a bill, how to avoid an underpayment penalty, and the three side effects that make the real rate higher than the bracket.
The required minimum distribution on every common balance at every age from 73 to 95, worked from the IRS table, plus what happens to the account over twenty years of withdrawals at 0%, 5% and 7% returns. The short version: the share you must take rises every year, and at good returns the dollar amount keeps rising with it.
What moving actually saves, on your own income mix rather than a headline rate — and how to establish domicile so the state you left cannot follow you.
Which account to draw first, priced. The three cliffs a withdrawal can cross without warning, the conversion window almost nobody uses, and why the order is the last big decision you can still change.
Arkansas guide
On the ordinary retirement profile — $34,000 of Social Security and $61,000 of plan distributions — Arkansas takes $1,629 a year in state income tax.
That is the number people compare, and it is the smallest of three. Property tax adds about $1,534 on the state's $284,111 median home, and insurance another $4,955. The three together come to $8,118, placing Arkansas 29th of 50.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Every Arkansas figure comes from this site's own fifty-state income-tax dataset and its retirement tax engine, computed for a single filer aged 70 unless stated otherwise; property tax, median home price and insurance figures come from the site's core state dataset. Rates are for tax year 2025. Property tax is assessed locally in most states, so the effective rate here is a statewide figure rather than your county's.
On Social Security. Fully exempt with no income threshold and no age condition. The 2025 AR1000F/AR1000NR instructions list Social Security benefits among exempt income, alongside VA benefits, Workers' Compensation and related supplemental benefits, and railroad retirement benefits reported on Form 1099-R. Because the benefit is exempt outright rather than subtracted against a cap, it does not consume any part of the $6,000 retirement exemption described below — an Arkansas retiree gets the Social Security exemption and the $6,000, rather than one eating into the other.
On 401(k) and IRA distributions. A flat $6,000 exemption per taxpayer, and the age trigger applies to IRAs but not to employer plans — the two halves of this rule have different conditions and flattening them is the easy error. Employer-sponsored plans: income from an employer-sponsored retirement plan, including disability retirement that is not exempt under IRC section 104, gets the first $6,000 exempt with NO age condition at all. If the filer contributed after-tax dollars, they first recover their cost under IRC section 72, and then the first $6,000 of the remaining balance is exempt. The premature-distribution disqualifier is sharp and is spelled out by name: premature distributions on account of the participant's death or disability still qualify, but 'all other premature distributions or early withdrawals (including, but not limited to, those taken for medical expenses, higher education expenses or a first-time home purchase) do not qualify for the exemption.' the $6,000 is a single shared ceiling, not one per plan: Arkansas states that total exemptions from all plans described under the employer-plan and IRA provisions 'cannot exceed $6,000 per taxpayer, not including recovery of cost.' It is per taxpayer, which is why the married-joint figure above is $12,000 — two qualifying spouses. A surviving spouse qualifies but is limited to a single $6,000 exemption, not two. Claimed on AR1000F lines 18A and 18
Read the full Arkansas guide →20 min read · Updated 2026-09-03