Missouri tax brackets

Missouri tax brackets for 2026

Missouri taxes income in eight brackets for 2026. On a joint return each spouse is taxed on the single schedule on his or her share of the couple's taxable income, so a couple with two earners gets every bracket twice — the joint column below — and a couple with one earner gets it once.

The top rate of 4.7% applies above $9,436 of taxable income.

Taxable income is what is left after a standard deduction of $16,100 for a single filer and $32,200 for a couple. On top of that, Missouri lets you deduct part of the federal income tax you paid, by how much your adjusted gross income is: 35% if it is $25,000 or less, 25% up to $50,000, 15% up to $100,000, 5% up to $125,000, 0% above $125,000, capped at $5,000 ($10,000 on a joint return).

Where each rate starts on your actual salary

The brackets are written in taxable income, and nobody knows their taxable income by heart — everyone knows their salary. The gap between the two is whatever comes off before the rate is applied: in Missouri, $16,100 of standard deduction for a single filer and $32,200 for a couple, plus a share of the federal income tax you paid, up to $5,000. So the schedule is read wrongly by construction, and the fix is to shift it — by a different amount at every salary, because the federal tax you subtract changes with pay, which is exactly why the table below is worked out salary by salary.

The table below moves every threshold into salary terms. The first dollar of tax is owed at a gross income of $17,498 for a single filer and $34,966 for a couple.

These are wage figures, and they assume the income Missouri starts from equals your salary with nothing taken out before it. Anything the state lets you subtract first moves every one of these lines up by the same amount — and the list is not the same in every state, which is why it is worth checking yours rather than assuming the federal one applies.

Missouri's deduction for federal tax, and the steps it creates

Missouri lets you deduct part of the federal income tax you paid before its own rates apply. The share depends on your adjusted gross income: 35% if it is $25,000 or less, 25% up to $50,000, 15% up to $100,000, 5% up to $125,000, 0% above $125,000. The deduction is capped at $5,000 on a single return and $10,000 on a joint one, and the income bands are the same for both.

In practice it is modest and it fades: a single filer on $20,000 deducts $137 of $390 in federal tax; $40,000 deducts $655 of $2,620 in federal tax; $75,000 deducts $1,151 of $7,670 in federal tax; $110,000 deducts $769 of $15,370 in federal tax. By $125,001 there is nothing left to deduct.

While a share of the federal tax is deductible, each extra dollar of pay raises the federal tax a little and takes a little off Missouri's taxable income, so the real marginal rate sits just under the bracket rate: at $75,000 the bracket says 4.7%, the next $100 costs 4.55%.

The bands end abruptly, so each one is a small step in the bill: at $25,001 one more dollar of income adds about $4; at $50,001 one more dollar of income adds about $18; at $100,001 one more dollar of income adds about $62; at $125,001 one more dollar of income adds about $44. They are the only places on the Missouri scale where earning a dollar more costs more than a dollar's worth of rate, and the tables on this page measure the marginal rate on the smooth stretch next to each salary rather than across a step.

One salary through the whole calculation

Here is a single filer earning $75,000 in wages, step by step, exactly as the calculation runs.

The result: $2,534 of Missouri income tax, an effective rate of 3.38% on the salary, with eight brackets each taxing its own slice.

Every figure on this page is this same sequence run at a different salary. None of it is estimated from an average: change the brackets in the source and every number here changes with them.

What Missouri takes at seven salaries

The rate in the schedule is not the rate you pay. Here is the 2026 Missouri income tax at seven salaries, for a single filer and for a married couple filing jointly on the same household income, with the effective rate — tax divided by gross income — and the marginal rate measured on the next $100 rather than read off the schedule.

Notice that the effective rate never catches the marginal one. At $100,000 a single filer's marginal rate is 4.55% and the effective rate 3.67%; at $200,000 the effective rate is still 4.23%. Every bracket below yours is taxed at its own lower rate, whatever you earn.

The joint figures assume two earners who split the household income evenly, because in Missouri each spouse is taxed on the single schedule on his or her own share of a joint return. How much the split matters is set out [below](#income-split).

The table stops at $200,000 on purpose. Above roughly $250,000 some states start withdrawing deductions and exemptions, and a figure for those incomes should come from the full calculator, which asks for the details that decide it.

Take-home pay in Missouri at seven salaries

The state income tax is one of four taxes on a paycheck. Here is what a single filer keeps once Missouri, federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare have all come off — before any local income tax, and what share of the combined bill Missouri accounts for.

Missouri's slice of the total is smallest at the bottom of the scale and grows as pay rises: 10.93% of the taxes on $30,000, 14.21% on $200,000. Over this range the Missouri tax rises faster with pay than the federal and payroll taxes put together, so its share of the bill grows.

Three Missouri households

Averages hide the households they are made of. Three typical ones, each with every tax on their wages:

A single filer earning $40,000: Missouri $912, federal income tax $2,620, Social Security and Medicare $3,060 — $6,592 in all, leaving $33,408 ($2,784 a month). The state is 13.83% of what they pay.

A married couple earning $60,000 and $35,000, filing jointly: Missouri $2,541, federal income tax $7,040, Social Security and Medicare $7,268 — $16,849 in all, leaving $78,151 ($6,513 a month). The state is 15.08% of what they pay.

A single professional earning $180,000: Missouri $7,523, federal income tax $31,934, Social Security and Medicare $13,770 — $53,227 in all, leaving $126,773 ($10,564 a month). The state is 14.13% of what they pay.

In all three, Social Security and Medicare take more than Missouri does. The payroll taxes have no deduction at all and start on the first dollar, which is why they are the largest tax many lower earners pay.

Missouri income tax at every $10,000

For a salary between the seven above, here is the single-filer figure in $10,000 steps, from $20,000 to $200,000.

Between two steps the tax moves in a straight line at the marginal rate, so for $64,000 take the $60,000 figure and add 4.61% of the extra $4,000.

Per paycheck, and why your withholding will not match exactly

Spread over 26 biweekly paychecks, a single filer's Missouri income tax comes to about $18 at $30,000, $53 at $50,000, $97 at $75,000, $141 at $100,000, $188 at $125,000.

On other pay schedules, the $75,000 figure of $2,534 a year works out to about $49 a week, $106 twice a month, or $211 once a month. The annual total is the same whichever way it is paid; only the slices change.

What your employer actually withholds is set by the state's withholding formula, which is built to land close to these annual figures but is not the same calculation — it works one paycheck at a time and relies on the form you filled in when you started the job. The gap between the two comes back at filing time as a refund or a bill. The Missouri refund estimator runs that reconciliation for your own figures.

What each bracket costs in dollars

A bracket is a slice, and each full slice has a fixed price. For a single filer, the table gives what each slice costs once it is full, and the running total by the time you reach its top.

Those running totals are the fixed amount owed on everything below a given threshold. From there, only the part of your income inside your own bracket is taxed at its rate.

Moving into a higher bracket

The belief that a raise can cost you money because it "pushes you into a higher bracket" is the most common misreading of a schedule, and Missouri's shows why it is wrong.

A single filer's 4.7% rate starts at $25,778 of salary. At $24,778 the Missouri tax is $215; at $26,778 it is $309. The extra $2,000 of pay cost $94 — part at the old rate, part at the new one — and not a cent more on the income below.

Only the dollars inside a bracket pay that bracket's rate. Crossing a threshold changes the price of the next dollar, never of the ones already earned. The steps in Missouri's federal subtraction and exemption credit, explained above, are the exception — they are not brackets, and they do reach back.

Four ways to misread the Missouri schedule

Applying the rate to your salary. 4.7% of a $75,000 salary is $3,525; the real Missouri tax on it is $2,534. The shortcut overstates the bill by $991, 39.11% too high, because it skips everything that comes off first and taxes every dollar at the top rate.

Using the single thresholds on a joint return. A couple with $150,000, both earning, who ran their joint taxable income through the single schedule once would work out $5,356; their actual Missouri tax is $5,175. The $181 gap is the reason both schedules are printed on this page.

Confusing the effective rate with the marginal one. At $75,000 the combined effective income tax rate, federal plus Missouri, is 13.61%; the combined marginal rate is 26.55%. The first says how much of the salary goes in income tax; the second what the next dollar costs. Pricing a raise or a pre-tax contribution with the first is the classic slip.

Forgetting the local layer. Missouri has local income tax on top of every figure on this page. A table of state brackets is, by construction, not the whole bill here.

What you keep from a $5,000 raise

The combined marginal rate is abstract; a raise is not. Here is where an extra $5,000 of salary goes for a single filer, with federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare all measured on the same two salaries:

From $50,000 to $55,000: Missouri $249, federal income tax $600, Social Security and Medicare $383 — you keep $3,768, or 75.36% of the raise.

From $100,000 to $105,000: Missouri $294, federal income tax $1,100, Social Security and Medicare $383 — you keep $3,223, or 64.46% of the raise.

Missouri's share is 4.97% of the raise at $50,000 and 5.89% at $100,000, before any local income tax. The jump at $50,000 is not a higher rate: the raise crosses one of the steps described above, and the step is paid in full the moment income goes over it.

Married filing jointly: does Missouri penalise it?

On a joint return Missouri splits the couple's taxable income between the spouses by each one's share of income and taxes each share on the single schedule. When both earn, every bracket is used twice — the same as doubling the thresholds; when one earns everything, the couple is taxed on the single schedule once.

Measured on a household earning $100,000: split evenly, two single people would pay $2,736 between them; married and filing jointly they pay $2,771. That is a marriage penalty of $35 a year at the state level.

With the same $100,000 earned by one partner alone, a single filer would pay $3,670; the couple pays $2,952, so filing jointly with a non-earning spouse is worth $718 a year in Missouri tax. All of it comes from the second deduction, since the rates are the same.

How the split between two incomes changes it

A joint return pools the two incomes, so a married couple on $100,000 pays $2,771 to Missouri however the $100,000 is divided between them — as long as both of them earn. With a single earner the couple pays $2,952, because each spouse is taxed on the single schedule on his or her own share of a joint return. Two unmarried partners file separately, and for them the split matters, as the table shows for four ways of dividing the same $100,000.

The more lopsided the split, the more a joint return is worth, because it lets the lower earner's unused low brackets and deduction absorb part of the higher earner's income. These are Missouri figures only; the federal return has its own, separate version of the same effect.

Missouri and federal brackets together

Every extra dollar is taxed by both. The combined marginal income tax rate — federal plus Missouri — is 16.56% at $30,000 and 28.7% at $200,000 for a single filer, and the table shows every step in between.

On top of that come Social Security (6.2% up to the wage base) and Medicare (1.45%, plus 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200,000 for a single filer). And the deduction for state income tax on a federal return only helps if you itemise — most people take the federal standard deduction and get nothing back for the state tax they paid.

The federal brackets step up at different points from the Missouri ones, so the combined rate changes in more places than either schedule alone. Planning a raise or a bonus around one table is how people misjudge what they will keep.

On top of these brackets: city income tax

The state brackets are not the whole income tax in Missouri. There is also city-level income tax, charged on top, and none of the figures above include it.

Because it depends on where you live and sometimes on where you work, a single statewide figure would be wrong for most readers. The Missouri income tax calculator is where the local layer is dealt with for the places that have one.

How Missouri ranks

On a $75,000 salary, single, Missouri takes $2,534 — the 16th lowest of the 42 jurisdictions that charge anything at that salary, with nine taking nothing at all. The middle of those 42 takes $2,802, so Missouri is $268 below it.

The position is not fixed; it moves with the salary: 12th lowest at $50,000, 16th lowest at $75,000, 18th lowest at $150,000. Missouri moves toward the expensive end as income rises: what keeps it cheap at low pay is the amount that comes off first, and that matters less the more you earn.

At that salary the range among states that charge anything runs from $182 in North Dakota to $5,055 in Oregon, which puts Missouri 48.26% of the way from the cheapest to the dearest.

Within $250 of it at $75,000: Pennsylvania ($2,303), New Mexico ($2,359), Arkansas ($2,380), North Carolina ($2,484). States that look different on paper often end up a few hundred dollars apart, because the deduction moves the bill as much as the rate does.

For 2026, 13 states tax wages at a single rate, 29 jurisdictions use brackets and 9 have no tax on wages at all, so Missouri is one of the 29 with brackets.

The 2026 brackets for every state are on one page, and the state income tax comparison ranks all 51 at the salary you choose.

What this page leaves out

Head of household and married filing separately. This page publishes the two schedules that were read at source, single and joint, and nothing for the other two statuses rather than a guess.

Dependents and credits. Credits for children, earned income, retirement income and the rest depend on your household, not on the brackets, and are left to the Missouri income tax calculator.

Income that is not wages. Retirement income, capital gains and business income can be treated differently in Missouri from a salary. Everything above is for wages.

Other tax years. Every figure here is for the 2026 tax year, the return filed in 2027. A return for an earlier year has to be worked out with that year's rates and thresholds, which is exactly where copied tables go wrong.

Where these brackets come from

Read off the Missouri Department of Revenue's own 2026 figures, [dor.mo.gov/forms/Withholding%20Formula_2026.pdf](https://dor.mo.gov/forms/Withholding%20Formula_2026.pdf), checked on 2026-09-25. Both the single and the joint rules were verified against that source before this page was published — a state whose joint schedule has not been read does not get a brackets page here yet, and neither does one whose rules our engine still simplifies.

Every dollar figure on this page is computed by the same engine as the Missouri income tax calculator, from the brackets above, so the two cannot disagree. If Missouri changes a rate or a threshold, this page changes with the data.

Questions

What are the Missouri tax brackets for 2026?

Missouri has eight brackets for single filers in 2026: 0% up to $1,348, 2% up to $2,696, 2.5% up to $4,044, 3% up to $5,392, 3.5% up to $6,740, 4% up to $8,088, 4.5% up to $9,436, 4.7% above $9,436 of taxable income.

What is the Missouri income tax rate for 2026?

From 0% to 4.7%, depending on the bracket. The top rate applies above $9,436 of taxable income for a single filer.

Is Missouri a flat tax state?

No. Missouri uses eight brackets, from 0% up to 4.7%.

At what income do you start paying Missouri income tax?

A single filer with only wage income owes the first dollar of Missouri tax at a gross income of about $17,498, and a married couple filing jointly at about $34,966.

How much Missouri income tax do you pay on $100,000?

A single filer earning $100,000 in wages pays about $3,670 in Missouri income tax for 2026, an effective rate of 3.67%, before any local income tax. A married couple filing jointly on the same household income pays about $2,771.

Is Missouri income tax high or low?

On a $75,000 salary, single, Missouri takes $2,534 — in the middle of the 42 jurisdictions that tax wages (16th lowest), against $2,802 for the middle one. Nine take nothing at that salary.

How much is Missouri state tax per paycheck?

On a $75,000 salary paid every two weeks, a single filer's Missouri income tax comes to about $97 a paycheck, or $211 a month. Actual withholding follows the state's own formula and can differ slightly; the difference is settled when you file.

What is the Missouri standard deduction for 2026?

$16,100 for a single filer and $32,200 for a married couple filing jointly. It comes off before any bracket is applied.

Are Missouri tax brackets different for married couples?

On a joint return Missouri splits the couple's taxable income between the spouses by each one's share of income and taxes each share on the single schedule. When both earn, every bracket is used twice — the same as doubling the thresholds; when one earns everything, the couple is taxed on the single schedule once.