Georgia moved to a flat income tax and, unusually, did not use the move as cover for shrinking what it shelters. The rate is 4.99% and the standard deduction is $15,000 for a single filer — larger than all but a handful of states allow, and more than six times Arkansas's.
The result is that nobody in Georgia pays 4.99%. On $85,000 a single filer pays $3,493, an effective rate of 4.11%, and takes home $65,135.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Federal figures are tax year 2026, from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and the Social Security Administration; Georgia's rate, deduction and retirement rules come from this site's own sourced 50-state dataset, citing O.C.G.A. Title 48 and the Department of Revenue's IT-511 booklet and Form 500. Every dollar figure is computed by the same engine the site's calculators use, on a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependents or pre-tax deferrals unless stated. Sales tax and property tax are discussed qualitatively.
1. What Georgia takes
| Amount on $85,000 | |
|---|---|
| Gross salary | $85,000 |
| Federal income tax | −$9,870 |
| Social Security (6.2%) | −$5,270 |
| Medicare (1.45%) | −$1,233 |
| Georgia income tax | −$3,493 |
| Take-home | $65,135 |
Across incomes, single filer:
| Salary | Georgia tax | Effective GA rate | Take-home |
|---|---|---|---|
| $30,000 | $749 | 2.50% | $24,536 |
| $45,000 | $1,497 | 3.33% | $36,841 |
| $60,000 | $2,246 | 3.74% | $48,144 |
| $85,000 | $3,493 | 4.11% | $65,135 |
| $120,000 | $5,240 | 4.37% | $88,010 |
| $175,000 | $7,984 | 4.56% | $122,895 |
The statutory rate is 4.99% and the effective rate never reaches it. At $175,000 it is 4.56%; at $30,000 it is exactly half the headline, at 2.50%. The gap is the $15,000 deduction, which is a large share of a small salary and a shrinking share of a large one.
That is what makes a flat tax progressive. Not the rate — the shelter beneath it.
Run your own salary against Georgia's flat rate2. Filing jointly
| Salary | Single GA tax | Joint GA tax | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $30,000 | $749 | $0 | $749 |
| $45,000 | $1,497 | $749 | $748 |
| $60,000 | $2,246 | $1,497 | $749 |
| $85,000 | $3,493 | $2,745 | $748 |
| $120,000 | $5,240 | $4,491 | $749 |
| $175,000 | $7,984 | $7,236 | $748 |
A flat $748 at every income, and the arithmetic is clean: the joint standard deduction is $30,000 against $15,000 single, and 4.99% of the extra $15,000 is $748.50.
At $30,000 a couple filing jointly owes Georgia nothing, because $30,000 is exactly the joint deduction. Taxable income is zero.
Compare that constancy with a graduated state. Minnesota's joint benefit at $85,000 is $1,264 and grows with income, because the couple's income spreads across bracket thresholds that also doubled. Georgia has one bracket, so only the deduction can double, and its value is the same dollars at every income.
3. What the paycheck actually looks like
On $85,000 as a single filer:
| Pay schedule | Gross per cheque | Net per cheque |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly (52) | $1,634.62 | $1,252.59 |
| Biweekly (26) | $3,269.23 | $2,505.17 |
| Semi-monthly (24) | $3,541.67 | $2,713.94 |
| Monthly (12) | $7,083.33 | $5,427.88 |
Biweekly and semi-monthly are not the same thing. Biweekly is 26 cheques — every other Friday — so two months a year carry three paydays. Semi-monthly is 24, on fixed dates, so every month carries exactly two. The annual total is identical; the monthly cash flow is not, and a biweekly earner budgeting on "two cheques a month" is under-counting by $5,010 a year.
Form G-4 is Georgia's withholding certificate, and it still asks for allowances even though the personal exemption is gone. What the allowances now represent is the standard deduction and any dependent exemptions, translated into withholding terms — so the form has outlived the structure it was designed for. If you have not updated a G-4 since Georgia went flat, it is worth a look.
Withholding is an estimate, not the tax. Over-withholding produces a refund; under-withholding a bill.
4. No personal exemption, and a dependent exemption that counts differently
Georgia has no personal exemption for the taxpayer or spouse. That is a deliberate feature, not an omission: Georgia eliminated it when it moved to a flat tax and folded its value into the much larger standard deduction. Form 500 runs from adjusted gross income to the standard or itemised deduction, then to the dependent exemption, then to taxable income. There is no personal-exemption line anywhere on the return.
What survives is a dependent exemption of $5,000 per dependent for 2026, raised from $4,000 for 2025. It is a deduction from income, not a credit — so it is worth 4.99% of $5,000, or $249.50 per dependent, to every Georgia filer regardless of income. A flat tax makes deductions worth the same to everyone, which is unusual and worth stating.
| Household on $85,000 | Georgia tax |
|---|---|
| Single, no dependents | $3,493 |
| Single, one dependent | $3,244 |
| Single, three dependents | $2,745 |
| Married joint, two dependents | $2,246 |
And unborn children count. Following the LIFE Act, Form 500 captures unborn dependents separately from other dependents, at the same $5,000. Georgia is one of very few states where that is true, and it is a real line on a real return rather than a talking point.
5. Where Georgia ranks
At $85,000, Georgia's $3,493 is twenty-third of the 41 income-tax states — mid-table, and in the middle of its own neighbourhood: cheaper than Alabama, more expensive than South Carolina and North Carolina, and infinitely more than Florida and Tennessee, which take nothing.
| State | Tax on $85,000 |
|---|---|
| Alabama | $3,985 |
| Georgia | $3,493 |
| South Carolina | $3,320 |
| North Carolina | $2,883 |
| Tennessee, Florida | $0 |
Against its five neighbours:
| Salary | GA | NC | SC | AL | TN / FL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $30,000 | $749 | $688 | $299 | $1,235 | $0 |
| $45,000 | $1,497 | $1,287 | $668 | $1,985 | $0 |
| $85,000 | $3,493 | $2,883 | $3,320 | $3,985 | $0 |
| $175,000 | $7,984 | $6,474 | $8,152 | $8,485 | $0 |
Two things worth noticing.
North Carolina is cheaper than Georgia at every level shown, despite both being flat-rate states — 3.99% against 4.99%, on a similar base. That is a straightforward rate difference, and at $175,000 it is $1,510 a year.
South Carolina flips. At $30,000 and $45,000 it is dramatically cheaper than Georgia, because its SCIAD deduction is intact there. By $85,000 it is more expensive, and by $175,000 more expensive still — because the SCIAD has phased out entirely and South Carolina's 5.21% then applies to everything. Two states can swap places between $45,000 and $85,000, which is why a single-salary comparison decides nothing.
6. What the flat rate replaced, and what it cost
Georgia's flat tax arrived at the end of a multi-year transition from a graduated schedule that topped out near 6%. Understanding what changed explains who won.
The old structure ran a series of narrow brackets that reached their top rate at a very low level of income — a common pattern in Southern states, and one that made the schedule graduated in name and close to flat in effect for anyone above a modest salary. Alabama still works that way: its top 5% rate begins at $3,000 of taxable income.
The move to a genuine flat rate with a large standard deduction changed the distribution rather than the total. A $15,000 deduction against a 4.99% rate shelters $749 for every filer. Under a narrow-bracket schedule, the same person got the benefit of the low brackets and then paid close to the top rate on everything else.
Who gained and who did not:
Low earners gained clearly. A $30,000 single filer now pays $749, an effective 2.50%. Under a schedule that reached its top rate at a few thousand dollars of income, they would have paid substantially more.
High earners gained too, because the top rate fell. At $175,000 the 4.99% flat rate costs $7,984; a 5.75% top rate on a similar base would have cost roughly $1,200 more.
The people in between gained least in proportional terms, which is the usual arithmetic of a flat-rate transition and is why the debate over these moves is rarely about the rate alone.
One durable consequence: Georgia's rate is a single number set in statute, so a future change is a single-line amendment rather than a bracket-table rewrite. That makes the rate more visible politically, and more likely to move, than a schedule buried in a table. Georgia has already legislated reductions on a schedule tied to revenue conditions.
7. What Georgia charges besides income tax
Sales tax sits around the national middle on combined state and local rates.
Groceries are exempt from the state portion and subject to local rates — a middle path between Tennessee, which taxes food at both levels, and Wyoming, which exempts it entirely. For a household spending $8,000 a year on groceries, that exemption is worth a few hundred dollars against a state that taxes them fully.
Property tax is comparatively modest. Georgia's effective rates on owner-occupied housing sit below the national middle, and the state's homestead exemptions — including a substantial one for seniors in many counties — reduce it further for long-term owners.
Georgia has no vehicle property tax of the annual kind Connecticut and Virginia levy. Instead it charges a one-time Title Ad Valorem Tax when a vehicle changes hands, which is a large single payment rather than a recurring bill. For someone moving from Virginia or Connecticut, that is a genuine structural improvement and it is invisible in any income tax comparison.
Taken together: moderate income tax, moderate sales tax with a grocery exemption, low property tax, and no recurring car tax. Georgia's overall burden is lower than its 4.99% headline suggests, and the retirement exclusion in the next section makes it lower still for anyone over 62.
8. No local income tax
No Georgia county or municipality levies a personal income tax.
This is stated here as a negative finding rather than a cited prohibition, because that is what it is: no Georgia primary source affirmatively says local income taxes are barred, and no prohibiting constitutional or statutory provision was located. The evidence is structural — the Employer's Withholding Tax Guide provides for state withholding only, Form 500 carries no local line, and no Georgia city or county is known to levy one.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. In Nevada a constitutional clause bars the levy; in Wyoming a statute preempts the field. In Georgia the answer is "nobody does" rather than "nobody may" — a weaker form of the same practical result, and worth being honest about.
For a take-home figure it makes no difference today. A Georgia figure needs no local asterisk.
Georgia raises the rest at the register and on property. Combined state and local sales tax rates sit around the national middle, and Georgia exempts groceries from the state portion while allowing local rates to apply — a middle path between Tennessee's full taxation and Wyoming's full exemption.
9. Retirement: two exclusions that do not compete
Georgia is one of the better retirement states, and the reason is a feature that published summaries routinely flatten.
Social Security is fully exempt — no cap, no age test, no income phase-out. The IT-511 booklet subtracts Social Security and Railroad Retirement in full.
And here is the part that gets told backwards: Social Security is exempted SEPARATELY and does not consume any part of the retirement income exclusion. The exclusion worksheet expressly instructs that Social Security and Railroad Retirement should not be included in the exclusion calculation.
So a Georgia retiree gets both, in full, without one eating the other.
The retirement income exclusion has two age tiers:
| Age | Exclusion per taxpayer |
|---|---|
| Under 62 | $0 (unless permanently and totally disabled, then $35,000) |
| 62 to 64 | $35,000 |
| 65 and over | $65,000 |
Per taxpayer, not per return. A couple both aged 65 or over gets $130,000. A couple aged 62 to 64 gets $70,000.
Private and public pensions are treated identically. Georgia has no government-pension carve-out — a state, local, federal, Teachers Retirement System or Employees Retirement System pension runs through exactly the same age-gated exclusion as a private one. That was checked rather than assumed, because it is the opposite of the common pattern.
| Retirement income at 65+, single | Georgia tax |
|---|---|
| $40,000 all Social Security | $0 |
| $40,000 all 401(k) withdrawals | $0 |
| $70,000 — $30,000 SS + $40,000 401(k) | $0 |
| $100,000 — $30,000 SS + $70,000 401(k) | About $0 |
At 65 with a $65,000 exclusion stacked on a $15,000 standard deduction, a single retiree shelters $80,000 of non-Social-Security income before Georgia charges anything — and Social Security on top of that is exempt regardless. For most retirees Georgia is effectively a no-income-tax state.
The age-62 cliff is worth planning around. Someone retiring at 60 gets nothing for two years and then $35,000, then $65,000 at 65. Sequencing withdrawals across those boundaries is one of the few genuinely valuable pieces of Georgia-specific planning.
There is no estate or inheritance tax.
10. What you can control
Pre-tax deferrals save 4.99% at state level on top of your federal rate. A $10,000 traditional 401(k) contribution saves an $85,000 earner $2,200 federally plus $499 in Georgia tax.
And because the rate is flat, the saving is the same percentage at every income. In a graduated state a deferral is worth your top bracket, so it is worth more to a high earner than a low one. In Georgia a $10,000 deferral saves $499 whether you earn $40,000 or $400,000. That symmetry is unusual and it makes the deferral decision purely federal.
HSA contributions through payroll cut federal tax, Georgia tax and FICA. On $4,400 that is roughly $968 federal, $220 Georgia and $337 FICA — about $1,525, or 35% of the amount contributed.
Capital gains get no state preference. Georgia taxes them as ordinary income at 4.99% — the return runs from federal AGI to a single multiplication, with no separate capital gains schedule anywhere on Form 500.
The retirement exclusion is the lever that dwarfs the rest. For anyone over 62, deciding when to draw from a traditional account matters more than almost anything else on this list, because the exclusion is per-year and unused amounts do not carry forward.
11. Moving to Georgia
From Florida or Tennessee, you are moving to an income tax, and $3,493 a year at $85,000 is the cost. Georgia's lower sales tax on groceries offsets some of it.
From North Carolina, Georgia is more expensive — $610 a year at $85,000, $1,510 at $175,000.
From South Carolina it depends entirely on your income. Cheaper below roughly $60,000, more expensive above it.
Atlanta's housing costs have moved a great deal, and a tax difference of a few hundred dollars a year does not offset the size of the housing gap that has opened up against smaller Southeastern metros.
If you are over 62, Georgia is one of the strongest retirement tax positions in the Southeast — better than South Carolina's and far better than Alabama's on account withdrawals, because Alabama taxes 401(k) distributions that Georgia excludes.
Frequently asked questions
What is Georgia's income tax rate? A flat 4.99% on income above the standard deduction — $15,000 single, $30,000 married filing jointly.
What is take-home pay on $85,000 in Georgia? $65,135 for a single filer taking the standard deduction, after $9,870 federal income tax, $6,503 FICA and $3,493 Georgia income tax.
Why is my effective Georgia rate below 4.99%? Because the $15,000 standard deduction comes off first. At $85,000 the effective rate is 4.11%; at $30,000 it is 2.50%. A flat tax behind a real deduction is still progressive.
Does Georgia have a personal exemption? Not for the taxpayer or spouse — it was eliminated when Georgia went flat and its value folded into the larger standard deduction. A $5,000 per-dependent exemption survives, and unborn children count.
Can a Georgia county or city tax my income? None does. That is a negative finding rather than a cited prohibition — no Georgia source affirmatively bars local income taxes — but no Georgia municipality levies one, so a take-home figure needs no local asterisk.
Does Georgia tax Social Security? No, and importantly it does not count against the retirement income exclusion either. The two are separate, so a retiree gets both in full.
How much retirement income can I exclude in Georgia? $35,000 per taxpayer from age 62, $65,000 from 65 — covering pensions, 401(k) and IRA distributions alike, with no distinction between public and private pensions. A couple both 65 or over excludes $130,000.
Is Georgia cheaper than North Carolina? No. North Carolina's 3.99% flat rate costs $2,883 at $85,000 against Georgia's $3,493 — $610 a year cheaper, and $1,510 cheaper at $175,000.
What to do next
Georgia's rate is flat and its deduction is real, which is a better combination than it sounds. If you are over 62, the retirement exclusion is the number that matters most.
- Georgia take-home pay calculator — your salary with every deduction shown separately.
- Your Paycheck in the USA in 2026 — all fifty states on one salary.
- Take-Home Pay in Tennessee — the no-income-tax neighbour to the north.
- Marginal vs Effective Tax Rate — why 4.99% is not what you pay.
- 50/30/20 budget calculator — built on take-home rather than salary.
Every figure on this site is sourced and dated. How we source every number.
Figures in this article are illustrations computed by this site's own tax engine for tax year 2026, on a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependents or pre-tax deferrals unless stated. Federal figures come from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and the Social Security Administration; Georgia's rate, deduction, dependent exemption and retirement exclusion from this site's sourced 50-state dataset, citing O.C.G.A. 48-7-27 and the Georgia Department of Revenue's IT-511 booklet and Form 500. Sales tax and property tax are discussed qualitatively rather than computed. This is general education and not tax advice; consult a licensed tax professional for your own situation.