What Rhode Island 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.
Rhode Island guide
On the ordinary retirement profile — $34,000 of Social Security and $61,000 of plan distributions — Rhode Island takes $0 a year in state income tax.
That is the number people compare, and it is the smallest of three. Property tax adds about $6,247 on the state's $525,000 median home, and insurance another $2,650. The three together come to $8,897, placing Rhode Island 35th of 50.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Every Rhode Island 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 2026. 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. Rhode Island is one of the small group of states still taxing Social Security in 2026, and the eligibility test has three parts, all of which must be met — the income threshold alone is not the answer. Under the modification enacted in 2015 and effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2016, a taxpayer qualifies only if (1) federal AGI includes taxable Social Security income, (2) the taxpayer has reached full retirement age as defined by the Social Security Administration, and (3) federal AGI is below the threshold for their filing status. condition (2) is the one every summary drops: a 63-year-old Rhode Islander taking early benefits on $40,000 of income gets NO modification and pays full Rhode Island tax on the federally taxable portion. The threshold is a cliff: below it the federally taxable benefits are subtracted in full, at or above it none are. Note the married-filing-separately figure equals the single figure rather than half the joint one, so filing separately does not lower the bar. thresholdBasis is federal-agi because the Division of Taxation states the test in terms of federal adjusted gross income directly.
Read the full Rhode Island guide →19 min read · Updated 2026-09-03