of which net investment income tax
An extra 3.8% on investment income above $200,000 of modified AGI single, $250,000 joint. It applies to the lesser of your net investment income and the amount over the threshold — so crossing by $100 costs $3.80, not 3.8% of the gain. Never indexed.
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 Missouri taxes a capital gain
Statutory authority: Mo. Rev. Stat. 143.121.3(14)(a), effective text dated 28 August 2025 (retrieved 3 September 2026)
Missouri taxes your salary and not your gain
Missouri has an individual income tax. It applies to wages, to business income, to interest — to essentially everything except the thing this calculator is about. Since tax year 2025 the state has subtracted one hundred percent of an individual’s capital gains before working out what is taxable, so the Missouri tax on a gain is zero.
The provision is R.S. 143.121.3(14)(a), and it is short enough to read in one breath: “For all tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2025, one hundred percent of all income reported as a capital gain for federal income tax purposes by an individual subject to tax pursuant to section 143.011”.
That is a different animal from the six states with no income tax at all. A Missourian with a salary still files a Missouri return and still owes Missouri money; a Texan does not. The distinction matters the moment your year contains anything besides the sale, and it is why this page exists rather than a line saying Missouri has no tax.
It is a subtraction, not a rate — which is why short-term gains are covered too
The most common way to get Missouri wrong is to look for a preferential rate, find none, and conclude gains are taxed as ordinary income. Missouri does not reduce the rate on a gain. It removes the gain from the income the rate is applied to.
Because the subtraction is written against a federal concept — income “reported as a capital gain for federal income tax purposes” — it reaches whatever the federal return reports in that character. A short-term gain is reported as a capital gain federally, so it is subtracted in Missouri as completely as a twenty-year holding. That is unusual: nearly every state that grants gains relief restricts it to long-term gains, and several on this site restrict it further to particular assets.
The practical effect is that the holding period, which is the largest single lever in the federal system, does nothing at all in Missouri. Selling at eleven months costs you real money federally and nothing extra at the state level.
What was checked before this figure was published
A claim that a state takes nothing is the easiest kind of claim to get wrong and the most expensive to be wrong about, so four things were confirmed in the statute text itself rather than inferred.
First, that subdivision (14) sits inside subsection 3, which opens “There shall be subtracted from the taxpayer’s federal adjusted gross income” — it is a subtraction, not a rate schedule. Second, that nothing later in the section claws it back: subsections 4 through 9 deal with the fiduciary adjustment, involuntary conversions, health insurance premiums and a provision that expired in 2020, and none of them touches gains. Third, that subsection 2 — the list of amounts added to federal income — contains no capital gains add-back.
Fourth, and the one most likely to trip a careful reader: paragraph (b) immediately below is not a condition on paragraph (a). It applies to entities taxed under section 143.071, and it is triggered only in the year after Missouri’s top rate first falls to four and a half percent or lower. The two paragraphs are joined by “and” as items in a list. Reading that “and” as a condition would make the individual subtraction contingent on a rate cut that has not happened, and would produce a confidently wrong answer.
Missouri’s rate is unverified, and it does not matter here
This site does not publish figures it has not read, and Missouri’s rate has not been read. Section 143.011 sets a top rate of 4.95% from 2023, then allows further reductions that depend on how much revenue the state collected, implemented by the Director of Revenue by rule. A statute like that does not tell you the current rate; it tells you how the rate is decided, and the answer lives in a determination published elsewhere.
Normally that stops a state from being computed at all — it is the same obstacle that makes Oklahoma determination-dependent. Missouri is the exception, and only for this calculator: the gain is removed from the base before any rate is applied, and zero multiplied by an unknown rate is still zero. The uncertainty cancels out.
That reasoning holds only for capital gains. If you want to know what Missouri will take from your salary, this site cannot tell you and does not pretend to. The corrections log records where figures here have been wrong before, and the reasoning above is written down so that nobody later mistakes a $0 gain figure for a verified Missouri rate.
Two details worth knowing
From tax year 2026 a separate subdivision, (15), subtracts gain on the sale or exchange of specie — gold and silver coin and bullion as defined in section 408.010. For an individual it changes nothing, because (14)(a) already subtracts the whole gain whatever the asset was. It is worth knowing only because it would become load-bearing if the general subtraction were ever narrowed, and because it tells you the legislature has revisited this area recently.
The corporate half is not in force. Paragraph (14)(b) would give entities the same hundred percent subtraction, but only from the year after the top individual rate reaches 4.5% or less. If you are selling through a Missouri entity rather than as an individual, the subtraction on this page does not apply to you and the entity rules do.
What Missouri does not change
Everything federal is untouched. A Missouri seller works out the holding period, the preferential ladder, the surtax on investment income above the threshold and any home-sale or depreciation relief exactly as a seller in any other state does, and the federal bill is usually the larger one by far. Missouri’s subtraction removes the state layer, not the federal one.
The calculator also assumes you were a Missouri resident for the whole year. A gain sourced to property in another state can remain taxable by that state whatever Missouri does with it, and a part-year move is outside what this tool models. Neither of those is a Missouri quirk — they apply everywhere — but they matter more here, because the state figure being zero makes it tempting to assume there is nothing left to think about.
A worked Missouri 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 $2,000,000 gain, and a $0 state bill
A single filer in Missouri earning $150,000 sells long-held shares for a $2,000,000 gain. The federal bill is substantial. The Missouri bill is not.
- Taxable income after deduction
- $2,133,900
- Taxable gain
- $2,000,000
- Tax owed without the sale
- $24,734
- Tax the sale added
- $453,520
- of which net investment income tax
- $74,100
- Total federal tax
- $478,254
- Missouri state tax
- $0
- Effective rate on the gain
- 22.68%
Missouri takes nothing, at any size of gain — the subtraction is a percentage of the whole gain, so it does not run out. The same taxpayer in Kansas next door would owe over $100,000 in state tax on this sale.
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 — 15 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$2,000,000
Assets held more than one year. Eligible for the 0/15/20% rates.
- Standard deduction-$16,100
Adjusted gross income of $2,150,000 less $16,100.
- Taxable income$2,133,900
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%$12,166
$55,300 of taxable income between $50,400 and $105,700.
- Ordinary income taxed at 24%$6,768
$28,200 of taxable income between $105,700 and $133,900.
- Ordinary income stacked below the long-term gain$133,900
Long-term gain is taxed by reference to where it sits ON TOP of $133,900 of other taxable income, not from the bottom of the rate table.
- Long-term gain taxed at 15%$61,740
Gain between the $49,450 zero-rate ceiling and the $545,500 15% ceiling.
- Long-term gain taxed at 20%$317,680
Gain above the $545,500 maximum 15% rate amount.
- Net investment income tax threshold$200,000
Modified AGI of $2,150,000 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%$74,100
3.8% of $1,950,000, the lesser of net investment income ($2,000,000) and the amount by which modified AGI exceeds the threshold ($1,950,000). Here the binding figure is the excess of modified AGI over the threshold.
- Missouri does not tax capital gains$0
Missouri subtracts ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of individual capital gains from federal adjusted gross income, so the state tax on a gain is $0 — long-term and short-term alike. This is Mo. Rev. Stat. 143.121.3(14)(a), in force for tax years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. It is a subtraction written into the income tax, NOT an absence of income tax: Missouri taxes wages and other ordinary income normally, so a Missouri resident with a salary still files and still pays. From 2026, subdivision (15) separately subtracts gain on the sale or exchange of specie as defined in section 408.010 — redundant for an individual, since (14)(a) already covers it, and it would matter only if (14)(a) were ever narrowed. The corporate half at (14)(b) is not in force: it applies to entities under section 143.071 and is triggered only in the year after Missouri’s top rate first falls to 4.5% or below.
- Total tax$478,254
$478,254 on $2,150,000 of total income, an effective rate of 22.24%.
A short-term gain, subtracted just as completely
A married couple in Missouri with $90,000 of income sells shares held under a year for a $50,000 gain. Federally this is the expensive case: the gain is taxed at ordinary rates with no preferential ladder.
- Taxable income after deduction
- $107,800
- Taxable gain
- $50,000
- Tax owed without the sale
- $6,440
- Tax the sale added
- $6,700
- Total federal tax
- $13,140
- Missouri state tax
- $0
- Effective rate on the gain
- 13.4%
The Missouri figure is still zero. The subtraction is written against what the federal return reports as a capital gain, and a short-term gain is reported that way — so the holding period, which decides so much federally, decides nothing here.
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 — 12 steps, each with its citation
- Net short-term capital gain or loss for the year$50,000
Assets held one year or less. Taxed at ordinary rates if a net gain.
- Net long-term capital gain or loss for the year$0
Assets held more than one year. Eligible for the 0/15/20% rates.
- Short-term gain added to ordinary income$50,000
Short-term capital gain has no preferential rate.
- Standard deduction-$32,200
Adjusted gross income of $140,000 less $32,200.
- Taxable income$107,800
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%$9,120
$76,000 of taxable income between $24,800 and $100,800.
- Ordinary income taxed at 22%$1,540
$7,000 of taxable income between $100,800 and $107,800.
- Net investment income tax threshold$250,000
Modified AGI of $140,000 against the $250,000 threshold for married filing jointly. This threshold is statutory and is not adjusted for inflation.
- Net investment income tax does not apply$0
Modified AGI is $110,000 below the threshold.
- Missouri does not tax capital gains$0
Missouri subtracts ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of individual capital gains from federal adjusted gross income, so the state tax on a gain is $0 — long-term and short-term alike. This is Mo. Rev. Stat. 143.121.3(14)(a), in force for tax years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. It is a subtraction written into the income tax, NOT an absence of income tax: Missouri taxes wages and other ordinary income normally, so a Missouri resident with a salary still files and still pays. From 2026, subdivision (15) separately subtracts gain on the sale or exchange of specie as defined in section 408.010 — redundant for an individual, since (14)(a) already covers it, and it would matter only if (14)(a) were ever narrowed. The corporate half at (14)(b) is not in force: it applies to entities under section 143.071 and is triggered only in the year after Missouri’s top rate first falls to 4.5% or below.
- Total tax$13,140
$13,140 on $140,000 of total income, an effective rate of 9.39%.
What this calculator does not cover for Missouri
Because Missouri levies no individual income tax, there is no state calculation to get wrong — the figure is zero regardless of your income or the size of the gain. Everything below the state line is federal.
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
- KansasTwo brackets, 5.2% and 5.58%. No zero band, despite what circulates.
- IllinoisFlat 4.95% on everything. No preferential rate, no exclusion.
- 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.