Retiring in Ohio

Every figure below is sourced to Ohio’s own publications and dated. Estimates only, and not tax advice.

Retirement tax by state

What your state actually takes from a 401(k) withdrawal, a pension, and Social Security — in dollars, not a yes/no list.

Brokerage account growth

Long-term index-fund growth after expense-ratio drag — and what your state takes from the gains at withdrawal.

Roth vs. Traditional

Decided on the two rates that actually govern it — yours now, and yours at withdrawal, in the state you'll retire in rather than the one you're in.

Contribution limit optimizer

2026 limits, employer match, the 60-63 super catch-up, and whether the Roth catch-up mandate applies to you.

Required minimum distribution

When your RMDs start under SECURE 2.0, how much this year's is, and what missing it costs.

Backdoor Roth pro-rata

What a backdoor Roth conversion would actually cost you in tax — the pro-rata rule most calculators only describe.

Self-directed IRA real estate (UDFI)

The tax a leveraged rental owes inside a self-directed IRA — computed at trust rates, not the rate you'd assume.

Ohio at a glance

401(k) and IRA withdrawals
Taxed
Social Security
Not taxed
Top marginal rate
2.75%
The top of 2 graduated brackets.
Tax year
2026
Brackets are legislated and change on a fixed calendar, so the year matters.
  • Ohio in 2026 is a very low STATE income tax state and a middling one once local tax is counted. For a retiree the local layer usually disappears: Ohio municipal income taxes are levied on earned income and business income, and most Ohio cities do not tax pensions, Social Security, or retirement distributions. A working Ohioan and a retired Ohioan in the same house therefore face very different total rates.
  • The retirement income credit's $100,000 modified-AGI ceiling is a cliff, not a phase-out: a couple at $99,000 gets the credit and the same couple at $101,000 gets nothing.
  • DELIBERATE OMISSION: autoIraProgram is not populated. Ohio has no state-facilitated auto-IRA employer mandate.

Local income tax applies in parts of Ohio

OHIO'S LOCAL INCOME TAX IS THE LARGEST SINGLE OMISSION A NAIVE OHIO CALCULATION MAKES. Most Ohio municipalities levy an income tax, and at 2%-2.5% a city rate is often close to the entire 2.75% state rate — an Ohio worker's real marginal income tax burden is frequently near 5.25%, not 2.75%. Rates are set municipality by municipality and cluster between about 1% and 3%. Under Ohio Revised Code 718.04 a municipality may levy up to 1% without voter approval and needs a majority of the electors for anything above that, with a grandfather clause for municipalities that already exceeded 1% on or before March 23, 2015 — which is why so many Ohio cities sit at 2% to 2.5%. NO STATEWIDE RATE IS RECORDED, deliberately: rates vary by city, they are levied on where you WORK as well as where you live (with a residence credit that varies by city and is not always 100%), and picking one number would fabricate a figure for everyone living elsewhere. A SECOND, SEPARATE LOCAL LAYER: Ohio also has SCHOOL DISTRICT income taxes, levied by a subset of districts on top of both the state and municipal taxes and filed on Form SD-100. Those are a distinct tax from the municipal one and a resident of a taxing district pays both.