What Colorado 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.
Colorado guide
On the ordinary retirement profile — $34,000 of Social Security and $61,000 of plan distributions — Colorado takes $2,416 a year in state income tax.
That is the number people compare, and it is the smallest of three. Property tax adds about $2,871 on the state's $563,000 median home, and insurance another $3,312. The three together come to $8,599, placing Colorado 33rd of 50.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Every Colorado 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. Colorado is one of the eight states still taxing Social Security in 2026, and the answer turns entirely on age — the thresholds above apply to one age band only. Read this block as three cases. (1) age 65 and older: the entire federally taxable Social Security benefit is subtractable, with NO income threshold at all, for income tax years beginning January 1, 2022 and after. The thresholds recorded above do not apply to this group. (2) age 55 to 64: for income tax years beginning January 1, 2025 and after, the full federally taxable benefit is subtractable only if adjusted gross income does not exceed $75,000 filing individually or $95,000 filing jointly. These are the figures recorded in thresholds.
On 401(k) and IRA distributions. 401(k), 403(b) and traditional IRA distributions are covered by Colorado's general pension and annuity subtraction, which is age-tiered and shared with Social Security rather than additional to it. That death-benefit carve-out is the only route to the subtraction before 55, and it requires distribution code 4 in box 7 of the 1099-R. It is per taxpayer, not per return: Colorado states that in the case of joint filers the subtraction is allowed separately to each taxpayer included in the joint return, which is why the married-joint figure above is $48,000 — two spouses both 65 or older. A couple where one spouse is 66 and the other is 60 gets $24,000 + $20,000 = $44,000, not $48,000, so the joint figure is a maximum rather than an automatic entitlement. The shared cap is the thing most lists Miss: this is the same allowance the Social Security subtraction draws on. Social Security is claimed on its own line of the Subtractions from Income Schedule (DR 0104AD) and then reduces what remains for other pension and annuity income.
Read the full Colorado guide →19 min read · Updated 2026-09-03