Should I stay, or should I go?

Figures reflect 2026 state tax rules as published by the Illinois Department of Revenue, the Illinois Attorney General, state revenue departments, and the Tax Foundation.

This page carries its own calendar. Each tax year is stored as a separate block in the page's source, and the right one is selected from the date when you open it. Rate changes already written into statute are loaded ahead of time, so states with legislated reductions switch over automatically on 1 January. Where a figure depends on a revenue trigger or an inflation adjustment that has not happened yet, it is left alone rather than guessed. If a year arrives that has not been reviewed, the page falls back to the most recent figures it holds and says so at the top rather than presenting them as current.

• Social Security is entered as a monthly amount per person, the figure that appears on your benefit statement, and multiplied out to an annual household total. The maximum is $5,181 a month at age 70 for the tax year shown, and the average retired worker receives about $2,071.
• Illinois income tax is a flat 4.95%, and Illinois fully exempts Social Security, pension, and qualified plan distributions including 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), and IRA withdrawals. Only your other taxable income is taxed, after the personal exemption.
• Other states are modeled using each state's 2026 rate along with its own treatment of Social Security, pensions, and retirement account withdrawals, including age-based exclusions where they apply. Where a state uses graduated brackets, a single representative rate for retiree-level income is applied rather than the full bracket schedule.
• Illinois property tax is your home value multiplied by a rate you control, set at 2.0% by default. The statewide average effective rate is about 1.88%, but Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane and Will county homeowners commonly pay 2.0% to 2.5%, so 2.0% is used as a Chicago-area default. If you know your own effective rate, or want to work back from the bill you actually pay, adjust the rate until the dollar figure beneath the slider matches it. Senior and homestead exemptions can reduce what you actually pay. Other states use their statewide effective rate.
• Sales tax applies each state's combined state and average local rate to the spending you enter. Illinois averages about 8.96%; Chicago is higher at 10.25%. Groceries and prescriptions are treated differently across states and are not modeled separately.
• Illinois estate tax is an approximation. Illinois does not simply tax the amount over $4 million at a flat rate — it uses a graduated credit table and an interrelated computation in which the tax is figured on the estate after the tax itself is deducted. That pushes the effective rate on the first million above the threshold to roughly 29%. This model is calibrated so a $5 million estate produces about $285,700, matching the figure the Illinois Attorney General's calculator returns. The authoritative computation is that calculator and Form 700. The exemption is neither indexed for inflation nor transferable between spouses.
• The trust comparison sets a credit shelter or bypass trust preserving both spouses' $4 million exemptions against no planning at all, where only one $4 million exemption survives. Real outcomes depend on how assets are titled and how the documents are drafted.
• Asset growth projections apply the rate you select to your entire estate, compounded annually. They are arithmetic illustrations, not forecasts, and do not represent the return of any investment.
• Federal income tax is excluded for the fifty states and D.C., because it is the same wherever you live among them.
• U.S. territories are modelled at the state-equivalent layer only, and carry a warning alongside the result. Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands use mirror tax codes: the federal Internal Revenue Code is their local tax law, so a resident pays broadly the federal amount to the territory rather than to the IRS, with no separate state-level tax on top. Their income tax line is therefore zero in the same sense Florida's is. Puerto Rico and American Samoa run their own codes and can tax residents on worldwide income with credit mechanisms, so a zero line there means the Illinois tax has gone, not that no tax is due. Mainland pensions, 401(k) and IRA distributions and Social Security stay U.S.-sourced and federally taxable in every territory, exactly as in Illinois, so the federal side is a wash for that income. Puerto Rico's Act 60 exempts Puerto Rico-source income under IRC §933 and does not reach mainland retirement income, which is the most commonly misunderstood point in the area.
• Territory property and consumption rates are rougher than any state's. Puerto Rico assesses property against a 1957 cost basis, so effective rates on market value are very low but vary sharply by municipality; 0.20% is used here. The U.S. Virgin Islands levies 0.377% on residential property. The Pacific territories and the USVI charge nothing at the register, taxing gross receipts and imports instead, modelled here at 5% embedded in prices. Puerto Rico's IVU is 11.5%, higher than any state. Treat all of these as starting points, not bills.

Not included: cost of living, housing prices, homeowners and flood insurance, health care and Medicare supplement pricing, vehicle and fuel taxes, local income taxes, or the cost of the move itself. In some states those differences are larger than the tax difference.