Tennessee has no state income tax on wages, so a Tennessee paycheck only loses federal income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicare). Use the calculators below to see your exact 2026 take-home pay in Tennessee, check the sales tax on a purchase, and estimate a mortgage payment with Tennessee property taxes factored in.
State Paycheck Calculator 2026
Estimate take-home pay after federal tax, FICA and your state’s income tax for the 2026 tax year.
How it works: the 2026 federal standard deduction ($16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly) comes off your salary first, then the 2026 federal brackets (10%–37%). FICA is applied properly: 6.2% Social Security on the first $184,500 of wages (2026 wage base), 1.45% Medicare on all wages, plus 0.9% additional Medicare on wages above $200,000 single / $250,000 married filing jointly. State tax applies each state’s own standard deduction/exemptions, then its brackets or flat rate. Local income taxes are not included — many cities and counties (e.g. New York City, Philadelphia, most of Ohio, Maryland counties, Indiana counties, Kentucky) levy their own payroll taxes on top of the state tax.
Tennessee sales tax calculator
The statewide base sales tax rate in Tennessee is 7% in 2026. Cities and counties can add their own local tax on top of the base rate — enter any local add-on below to see the full tax and total price.
Sales Tax Calculator 2026
Estimate the sales tax and total price using each state’s base rate (2026), plus any local add-on.
State base rates are the 2026 state-level rates (local add-ons excluded). Actual combined rates vary widely by city and county — many localities add 1–5%. Five states have no statewide sales tax (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon), though some localities still levy local taxes.
Mortgage calculator for Tennessee homes
The average effective property tax rate in Tennessee is about 0.5% of a home’s value per year. When you use the mortgage calculator below, enter roughly that percentage of the home price in the yearly property tax field for a realistic Tennessee monthly payment.
Mortgage Payment Calculator
Work out your monthly principal & interest payment, total interest and the true total cost of your loan.
How it works: your loan amount (price minus down payment) is repaid in equal monthly instalments using the standard amortisation formula, so early payments are mostly interest and later ones mostly principal. Property tax and insurance, if entered, are simply spread evenly across each month. Your actual rate and payment will depend on your lender, credit profile and the deal you choose.
Tennessee doesn’t tax your paycheck. It taxes your shopping cart instead — harder than almost anywhere else in America. The state sales tax is 7.00%, tied for the highest in the nation, and once local taxes pile on, the average combined rate hits 9.61%, the second-highest in the US. That’s the Tennessee bargain in one sentence: generous on payday, relentless at the register. Whether it’s a good deal for you depends entirely on how much of your income you spend versus earn.
Income tax in Tennessee in 2026
Tennessee has no tax on wages or salaries. Zero, at every income level, with no state return to file for employment income.
Older residents may remember the Hall tax, Tennessee’s old levy on interest and dividend income. It’s history — fully repealed in 2021 — so if a guide tells you Tennessee taxes investment income, it’s describing a state that no longer exists. Today, no form of personal income is taxed by Tennessee.
What that means in practice: your paycheck loses federal income tax and FICA, and nothing else to the state. High earners who spend carefully keep an outsized share of the benefit. Families who spend most of what they earn hand a bigger slice back through the sales tax — which is why economists call Tennessee’s system regressive and why the worked example below is only half the Tennessee story.
Worked example: $75,000 salary, single filer
Step 1 — Federal tax. $75,000 − $16,100 = $58,900 taxable, coming to $7,670.00 for 2026.
Step 2 — FICA. Social Security and Medicare: $5,737.50.
Step 3 — Tennessee tax. $0.00 — there is no state income tax to calculate.
Step 4 — Take-home pay. $75,000 − $7,670.00 − $5,737.50 = $61,592.50 a year, roughly $2,368.94 every two weeks. For a sense of scale, stand in Bristol, where the state line runs down the middle of State Street: the same salary on the Virginia side of that street hands over $3,498.40 a year in state income tax. On the Tennessee side, it’s zero. A Tennessee worker keeps the whole state share, every single payday.
Sales tax in Tennessee
Now the other shoe. Tennessee’s state rate is 7.00% — $70 of tax on a $1,000 purchase — and local governments add up to roughly 2.75% more, for combined rates that reach 9.75% in some places and average 9.61% statewide. Only Louisiana’s combined average is higher.
Groceries get a reduced state rate of 4% — a small acknowledgment that taxing food at the full freight hits hardest at the bottom. Prepared meals, cars, electronics: full rate. The calculator on this page uses the 7.00% state base, so treat its output as the starting point and add your local rate for the register truth. In Nashville and Memphis, that truth is close to one dollar in ten.
Property tax in Tennessee
Here’s Tennessee’s saving grace: property taxes are low. The average effective rate is 0.50%, putting a $300,000 home at about $1,500 a year — a third of the bill on the same house in Texas, another no-income-tax state.
That combination is Tennessee’s actual pitch, and it’s a strong one: no income tax and cheap property tax, funded by the sales tax instead. Homeowners who don’t spend extravagantly come out ahead of nearly every alternative in the region. The system’s critics are right that big-spending, lower-income households carry more of the load — both things are true, and which one describes you is a question about your budget, not the state’s brochure.
Frequently asked questions
What was the Hall tax, and is it really gone?
It was Tennessee’s tax on interest and dividend income — interest from bonds, dividends from stocks. It was phased down and fully repealed on January 1, 2021. Nothing replaced it. Tennessee now taxes no personal income at all.
Is Tennessee a good state for retirees, tax-wise?
On paper, one of the best: no tax on pensions, 401(k) withdrawals, or Social Security, plus low property taxes. The offset is the sales tax on everything you buy in retirement — still, most retirees come out well ahead.
Why is the sales tax so high?
Because it has to be. With no income tax, sales tax is the state’s main revenue engine, and the 7.00% state rate plus local add-ons reflect that. Tennessee voters have consistently preferred it that way.
Does Tennessee tax groceries?
Yes, but at a reduced 4% state rate instead of 7% — local taxes still apply on top. The state has also run occasional grocery tax holidays in recent years.
Feed your salary into the Tennessee calculator above — the state line will be zero, and for once that’s not a missing feature. Then spend a minute with the sales tax calculator, because in Tennessee that’s the tax that actually runs your life.
These calculators are for guidance only and aren’t financial advice.