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 Kansas taxes a capital gain
Statutory authority: K.S.A. 79-32,110 (retrieved 1 September 2026)
Two brackets, and the interesting part is what is missing
Kansas has one of the simplest structures on this site. For tax year 2024 and all tax years thereafter, taxable income up to $23,000 is taxed at 5.2% and the balance at 5.58%, with the joint threshold at exactly double, $46,000.
The gap between the two rates is thirty-eight hundredths of a point, which for practical purposes makes Kansas a flat 5.58% state for anyone with a capital gain. A gain stacks above ordinary income, an ordinary salary has already passed $23,000, and the entire gain is charged at the upper rate.
What makes Kansas worth a page is not the ladder. It is a feature that several secondary sources still report and that does not exist: a zero-rate band on the first slice of income.
The zero-rate band expired after 2023
K.S.A. 79-32,110 did contain a zero-rate provision, and the statute still carries the text. It applied, by its own terms, for tax years 2018 through 2023. It has not applied since, and it does not apply to 2026.
This is a harder error to catch than an out-of-date rate, because the text is genuinely in the current statute. Someone reading the section and searching for "zero" will find it, quote it accurately, and be wrong — the mistake is not in the reading but in missing the date range that scopes it. A research summary handed to this project presented exactly that band as part of the current Kansas structure.
The general rule it produced is recorded on the methodology page: a quotation is not evidence on its own, because the years a provision applies to are part of the figure. Kansas is the cleanest illustration of it on the site.
How this calculator avoids inheriting that error
Every state figure here is read from a primary source and recorded with the years it covers, and where a figure turns out to have been wrong it is logged publicly rather than quietly amended. The corrections page carries the Kansas band alongside the other cases — a superseded Georgia rate, an unenacted Kentucky bill, a stale Massachusetts threshold and a Tax Foundation figure for Washington that disagreed with the statute.
The practical value to a reader is limited but real: you can see what this site has got wrong, which is more than most rate tables will show you, and you can judge the rest accordingly.
Thresholds that do not move, in a state that does not index
The Kansas thresholds are stated in the statute as fixed dollar amounts for tax year 2024 and all years after it, with no inflation provision. The joint figure is exactly twice the single one, which is the ordinary arrangement and worth noting only because several states on this site do not do it.
Because the transition sits at $23,000 and never rises, the lower 5.2% band is consumed by ordinary income for essentially every working filer. Kansas is therefore stable and predictable to plan around, in the narrow sense that the answer is almost always 5.58% of the gain regardless of when you sell or how you split it.
Kansas against the states around it
For a capital gain the comparison with neighbouring states is simple, because none of them gives gains preferential treatment either — it is one flat-ish proportion against another.
Kansas at 5.58% sits above Oklahoma, whose top rate came down to 4.5% for 2026 and which starts with a genuine zero-rate band, and above Colorado at a flat 4.4%. It is a little below Iowa’s neighbours to the north and well below Minnesota. Missouri and Nebraska border Kansas too, and neither has been verified from a primary source here, so neither appears in the calculator and neither is quoted in this comparison.
That last point is the honest limit of a regional comparison on this site: it can only include states whose figures have actually been read. A comparison table that covers every neighbour is either better researched than this one or quoting something it has not checked.
What Kansas does not change
Kansas gives capital gains no preferential rate, no exclusion and no holding-period distinction. A gain is ordinary income on the ladder above.
The federal half of the bill is untouched by living in Kansas, and it is where all the structure is: preferential rates for long holdings, an exclusion on a main home, a separate charge on investment income above a threshold. Kansas adds one nearly-flat percentage to whatever that produces.
The state figure here stacks your gain on federal ordinary taxable income. Kansas applies its own standard deduction, personal exemptions and modifications, none of which are modelled, so the number is close for a straightforward wage-and-sale year and rougher where a Kansas return carries significant adjustments.
A worked Kansas 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 joint return
A married couple filing jointly in Kansas with $130,000 of income sells long-held shares for a $200,000 gain.
- Taxable income after deduction
- $297,800
- Taxable gain
- $200,000
- Tax owed without the sale
- $11,240
- Tax the sale added
- $32,875
- of which net investment income tax
- $3,040
- Total federal tax
- $44,115
- Kansas state tax
- $11,160
- Effective rate on the gain
- 16.44%
The whole gain is charged at 5.58%, because the couple’s ordinary income passed the $46,000 joint threshold long before the sale. Had the expired zero band still applied it would have made no difference at this income either — it never reached a gain stacked this high.
Caveats on this example (2)
- 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.
- Kansas: the state taxable income base is approximated by federal ordinary taxable income. State additions, subtractions and deductions are not modelled.
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-$32,200
Adjusted gross income of $330,000 less $32,200.
- Taxable income$297,800
The figure the rate tables and the capital gain ceilings are both measured against.
- Ordinary income taxed at 10%$2,480
$24,800 of taxable income between $0 and $24,800.
- Ordinary income taxed at 12%$8,760
$73,000 of taxable income between $24,800 and $97,800.
- Ordinary income stacked below the long-term gain$97,800
Long-term gain is taxed by reference to where it sits ON TOP of $97,800 of other taxable income, not from the bottom of the rate table.
- Long-term gain taxed at 0%$0
Taxable income stays at or below the $98,900 maximum zero-rate amount.
- Long-term gain taxed at 15%$29,835
Gain between the $98,900 zero-rate ceiling and the $613,700 15% ceiling.
- Net investment income tax threshold$250,000
Modified AGI of $330,000 against the $250,000 threshold for married filing jointly. This threshold is statutory and is not adjusted for inflation.
- Net investment income tax at 3.8%$3,040
3.8% of $80,000, the lesser of net investment income ($200,000) and the amount by which modified AGI exceeds the threshold ($80,000). Here the binding figure is the excess of modified AGI over the threshold.
- Kansas income tax on the gain$11,160
$200,000 stacked on $97,800 of other taxable income across a 2-bracket ladder topping out at 5.58%. Federal ordinary taxable income is used as the base; the state's own taxable income differs, so treat this as an approximation.
- Total tax$55,275
$55,275 on $330,000 of total income, an effective rate of 16.75%.
What this calculator does not cover for Kansas
The Kansas figure stacks your gain on your federal ordinary taxable income. Kansas 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
- OklahomaZero band, then 2.5/3.5/4.5% — with a revenue trigger on top.
- ColoradoFlat 4.40%. The old capital gain subtraction appears to be gone.
- IowaFlat 3.8%, with narrow farm and ESOP gain deductions not modelled.
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.