What if?
The same sale under different choices, each computed by the engine rather than estimated. Figures are the tax on the gain, so the rows stay comparable when a variant spans two tax years. Select one to load it into the calculator and read its full derivation.
Estimates only — this is not tax advice. Consult a CPA or enrolled agent before acting on these figures. The calculator does not model the alternative minimum tax, wash sales, like-kind exchanges, QSBS, installment sales, or state additions and subtractions. See what is out of scope.
Show your work — 0 steps, each with its rule and citation
How Georgia taxes a capital gain
Statutory authority: Georgia Department of Revenue, Important Tax Updates (retrieved 1 September 2026); rate set by HB 463, superseding HB 111
Why you will see 5.19% quoted, and why it is not the rate
Georgia has changed its income tax rate twice in quick succession, and the intermediate figure is still in wide circulation. HB 111, signed in April 2025, set the rate at 5.19%. That was correct law, and Georgia did begin 2026 under it. HB 463 then reduced the rate to 4.99% effective 1 January 2026.
This is a harder case than an ordinary out-of-date figure, because 5.19% was never wrong in the way a typo is wrong. It was enacted, it was accurate, and it was superseded. A source that recorded it faithfully and stopped looking is still publishing it, and nothing about the number announces that a later act has replaced it.
The Department of Revenue states the operative figure directly: the Georgia income tax rate has been reduced to a flat rate of 4.99%. Where a state has changed its rate mid-cycle, the revenue department’s own current-year page settles it in a way a rate table compiled earlier cannot.
How to tell a superseded rate from a current one
The practical test is not whether a figure has a citation — 5.19% has an excellent one — but whether the citation is the LAST word. A rate quoted with a bill number tells you what that bill did. It does not tell you whether a later bill has since done something else.
This site keeps a public log of figures it got wrong or nearly got wrong, and Georgia is on it. The 5.19% figure was carried in this calculator’s own data until the Department’s page was read. It is recorded on the corrections page with the date, the wrong figure, the right one and the source, because a calculator that has never published a correction is either perfect or not looking.
A flat rate with no preferential treatment for gains
Georgia moved from a graduated schedule to a single flat rate, and a flat rate makes the state layer unusually easy to reason about: 4.99% of the gain, with no bracket to straddle, no threshold to cross and no interaction with the size of your other income.
What Georgia does not do is give capital gains any preferential treatment. There is no state analogue of the federal 0/15/20% ladder, no exclusion for long-held assets and no holding-period distinction. A gain and a paycheque of the same size attract the same Georgia tax, which means the entire benefit of having held an asset for more than a year is federal.
The rate is also scheduled to continue falling in later years under the same legislation, subject to conditions. This page states the 2026 figure and will change when a later year’s figure has been read from the Department rather than projected from the schedule.
A flat rate removes most of the timing levers
Much of what makes capital gains planning interesting comes from brackets. Splitting a disposal across two tax years, or realising into a low-income year, works because a graduated schedule charges the same dollar differently depending on what sits beneath it. A flat rate removes that mechanism entirely at the state level.
In Georgia the state charge on a gain is 4.99% whether the gain is your only income or your tenth million. Splitting a sale across two years saves nothing in Georgia. Timing it into a sabbatical saves nothing in Georgia. Every one of those levers still works federally, and works exactly as well as it would in a state with no income tax at all — but the state component is a fixed proportion and will not move.
That is worth knowing before spending effort on a plan. If a strategy is being sold to you on the basis of its combined federal and state saving, the Georgia half of that arithmetic is zero for anything that works by moving income between years or between brackets.
What the Florida line is worth on a Georgia sale
Georgia shares a border with a state that levies no individual income tax at all, which makes the cost of the state layer unusually easy to see. On a $200,000 gain the Georgia charge is 4.99% of it; the Florida charge on the identical sale is nothing.
That difference is real, and it is also smaller than the way it is usually discussed. It is a fixed percentage of the gain, it does not compound, and it applies once. Against it sit the ordinary costs of actually moving — establishing residency in a way a state revenue department accepts, and the reality that Georgia can still tax a gain sourced to Georgia property regardless of where you live when you sell it.
The useful framing is that the state layer is worth knowing precisely and is rarely worth reorganising a life around. If you are genuinely deciding between the two, the figure to compare is the one this calculator produces for each state on your own numbers, not a headline rate.
What Georgia does not change
Living in Georgia does not alter your federal position at all. The long-term rates, the 3.8% net investment income tax, the Section 121 home-sale exclusion and Section 1250 depreciation recapture apply exactly as they would anywhere. Georgia tax is an additional layer, not a substitute.
The state figure here stacks your gain on federal ordinary taxable income. Georgia computes its own taxable income with its own adjustments and a state standard deduction, neither of which is modelled, so treat the number as close for a straightforward wage-and-sale situation and approximate otherwise.
A worked Georgia example
Every figure below is computed by the same engine that powers the calculator above, at the moment this page was built — not typed in by hand. When the tax-year data is updated, this example updates with it.
A $200,000 gain on a $90,000 salary
A single filer in Georgia earning $90,000 sells long-held shares for a $200,000 gain. The flat rate means the state layer does not depend on where the gain lands.
- Taxable income after deduction
- $273,900
- Taxable gain
- $200,000
- Tax owed without the sale
- $10,970
- Tax the sale added
- $33,420
- of which net investment income tax
- $3,420
- Total federal tax
- $44,390
- Georgia state tax
- $9,980
- Effective rate on the gain
- 16.71%
Georgia charges 4.99% of the gain flat. At the superseded 5.19% the same sale would have cost $400 more — small against the federal bill, and the kind of quiet difference that a stale rate table produces without anyone noticing.
Caveats on this example (1)
- Net investment income was derived from capital gains and qualified dividends only. Interest, non-qualified dividends, rents, royalties and passive business income inside ordinaryIncome are also net investment income under IRC 1411(c) and are not counted here.
Show the working — 13 steps, each with its citation
- Net short-term capital gain or loss for the year$0
Assets held one year or less. Taxed at ordinary rates if a net gain.
- Net long-term capital gain or loss for the year$200,000
Assets held more than one year. Eligible for the 0/15/20% rates.
- Standard deduction-$16,100
Adjusted gross income of $290,000 less $16,100.
- Taxable income$273,900
The figure the rate tables and the capital gain ceilings are both measured against.
- Ordinary income taxed at 10%$1,240
$12,400 of taxable income between $0 and $12,400.
- Ordinary income taxed at 12%$4,560
$38,000 of taxable income between $12,400 and $50,400.
- Ordinary income taxed at 22%$5,170
$23,500 of taxable income between $50,400 and $73,900.
- Ordinary income stacked below the long-term gain$73,900
Long-term gain is taxed by reference to where it sits ON TOP of $73,900 of other taxable income, not from the bottom of the rate table.
- Long-term gain taxed at 15%$30,000
Gain between the $49,450 zero-rate ceiling and the $545,500 15% ceiling.
- Net investment income tax threshold$200,000
Modified AGI of $290,000 against the $200,000 threshold for a single filer. This threshold is statutory and is not adjusted for inflation.
- Net investment income tax at 3.8%$3,420
3.8% of $90,000, the lesser of net investment income ($200,000) and the amount by which modified AGI exceeds the threshold ($90,000). Here the binding figure is the excess of modified AGI over the threshold.
- Georgia income tax at 4.99%$9,980
Flat 4.99% for tax year 2026, taxing capital gains as ordinary income. THE SECONDARY SOURCE WAS STALE: Tax Foundation carried 5.19%, which is the rate HB 111 set in April 2025 and which Georgia did begin 2026 under. HB 463 then reduced it to 4.99% effective 1 January 2026. The Department of Revenue states the operative figure verbatim: "The Georgia income tax rate has been reduced to a flat rate of 4.99%." This is the second time a Tax Foundation figure has disagreed with the operative rule, after Washington at 9% against the statutory 9.9%.
- Total tax$54,370
$54,370 on $290,000 of total income, an effective rate of 18.75%.
What this calculator does not cover for Georgia
The Georgia figure stacks your gain on your federal ordinary taxable income. Georgia computes its own taxable income with its own additions and subtractions, which are not modelled here — so treat the state number as a close approximation for a straightforward wage-and-sale situation, and as a rough one if your return carries significant state adjustments.
Full-year residency is assumed throughout. Part-year residents, non-residents, and gains sourced to property in another state all turn on rules this calculator does not model. The complete list of what is in and out of scope is on the methodology page.
Other states
- FloridaNo income tax by constitutional amendment. Federal tax still applies.
- MississippiFirst $10,000 of taxable income at 0%, then 4.0%.
- KentuckyFlat 3.5% for 2026, down from 4% in 2025.
See the full 2026 capital gains guide for the federal rules that apply wherever you live — the rate ladder, the net investment income tax, the home-sale exclusion and depreciation recapture — plus every state we currently cover.