Is Retiring to a Low-Tax State Really Worth It?
“Should we move to Florida to save on taxes?”
As a CFP® and wealth adviser with more than 20 years of investment experience, I hear some version of that question from nearly every client approaching retirement in a high-tax state, and it’s a fair one.
If you’ve spent decades building your savings, of course you want to keep more of it. States like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Nevada have long attracted retirees because they skip state income tax entirely. Next to a high-tax state like Connecticut, New Jersey or California, the choice can look obvious.
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After helping hundreds of families work through this decision, I’ve learned it rarely is. The tax savings are usually smaller than people expect, and the true cost of relocating is almost always bigger.
Recent changes in federal tax law have shifted the math even further. Before you list your house, it’s worth running the numbers.
Here’s what I walk clients through before they make the call.
The tax gap has narrowed
New federal legislation has changed how I evaluate a move for clients. A higher cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, a new bonus deduction for eligible older taxpayers and a permanent federal estate tax exemption of roughly $15 million per individual all reduce the federal tax burden for many retired households.
None of that eliminates state income tax. But it does mean the gap between staying in a high-tax state and relocating to a no-tax one is often smaller than it looked just a few years ago, especially for clients who assumed the old rules still applied.
I’ve started running this comparison earlier in the planning process for exactly that reason: The answer clients got two or three years ago may not hold up today.
Consider a hypothetical couple pulling $90,000 from IRAs, $45,000 in Social Security and $20,000 in investment income. Depending on their deductions and how that income is structured, moving to a no-tax state might save them several thousand dollars a year, which is real money but rarely the whole story.
The moving costs add up fast
Clients focus on the annual savings and forget the one-time bill: Real estate commissions, closing costs, movers, repairs before listing, furnishing a new home, temporary housing and the cost of rebuilding a healthcare and professional network from scratch.
I’ve seen these add up to tens of thousands of dollars before anyone accounts for the stress of starting over.
If a move saves $6,000 a year but costs $60,000 to pull off, that’s a decade just to break even. I want clients to see that number before they call a Realtor, not after.
You’re not just leaving a state
The cost that’s hardest to put on a spreadsheet, and the one I push clients hardest on, is distance from family. I’ve watched clients move south for the weather, then start flying back for birthdays, grandchildren’s games and Sunday dinners they didn’t expect to miss. The airfare and hotel bills climb, and some eventually move back entirely.
There’s also the team you leave behind: Your financial adviser, tax preparer, estate attorney, insurance agent, doctors. You can rebuild that team, but it takes time, and a physician who knows your history or an adviser who’s worked with your family for years provides continuity you can’t buy on day one in a new state.
I’ve had clients spend the better part of a year finding a new cardiologist or estate attorney they trusted as much as the one they left, and that search has a cost even if it never shows up on a spreadsheet.
Moving isn’t the only lever
Relocating is one way to lower your lifetime tax bill. It’s far from the only one.
I regularly help clients cut their tax burden through Roth conversions timed to lower-income years, coordinating retirement account withdrawals, managing required minimum distributions (RMDs), tax-efficient investing, charitable giving and smarter timing of Social Security.
Done well, these strategies can produce meaningful savings while letting clients stay exactly where they are.
When a move actually makes sense
None of this means relocating is a mistake. I have plenty of clients for whom it was the right call: Their family had already scattered, healthcare needs were easy to meet elsewhere, housing costs fit their goals better, or the long-term tax savings genuinely outweighed the cost of getting there.
The difference is that those clients ran the numbers first. Before you decide, ask yourself what you’d actually save after every tax year, what the total moving cost would be, how long it would take to break even, how often you’d travel back for family and whether better tax planning could get you a similar result without packing a single box.
Sometimes those questions confirm that moving is the right move. Just as often, they reveal that staying put is the smarter financial decision — you just hadn’t run the full comparison yet.
Retirement isn’t about finding the state with the lowest taxes. It’s about building a life you won’t spend the next decade second-guessing.
When I walk clients through taxes, income, healthcare, housing, estate planning and family togetherness, the answer usually gets a lot clearer, and it isn’t always the one they expected when they first asked about moving to Florida.
