What Tennessee 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.
None of your retirement income is taxed by Tennessee. The calculator still runs so you can see the total and compare it against another state with the switcher above — federal tax is a separate matter this page does not model.
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.
Tennessee guide
Tennessee charges nothing on retirement income. That is the line every comparison leads with, and it is true.
It is also one line of three. Property tax runs about $1,995 a year on the state's $383,600 median home, and home insurance averages $4,220. Together the three come to $6,215 a year, which places Tennessee 12th of 50.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Every Tennessee 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.
Every one is $0 for one structural reason. Tennessee has no individual income tax, so it never draws the distinctions most states spend pages on — no exclusion amount, no age gate, no income ceiling, and no separate treatment of a government pension against a private one.
The one piece of history that still matters: Tennessee is not a state that never had an income tax. It had the Hall income tax on interest and dividend income, which was phased down and then repealed for tax periods beginning on or after January 1, 2021. Material written before 2021 that describes Tennessee as taxing investment income at 6%, 5%, 4%, 3%, 2% or 1% is describing the Hall tax and its statutory phase-down, none of which is in force.
Because the Hall tax reached only interest and dividends, its repeal changed nothing for wage earners or for retirees living on Social Security and pension distributions; it mattered chiefly to investors holding dividend-paying stocks and interest-bearing accounts.
Read the full Tennessee guide →16 min read · Updated 2026-09-03