Clear Money Guide
What this state guide covers
A quick view of the questions, practical details and source notes below.
Updated August 12, 2026. Quick answer: No. Mississippi is one of the few states that answered this question in its own statute rather than leaving it to inference: since the 2010 taxable year, Miss. Code § 27-7-15(4)(ff) has listed “amounts converted in accordance with the United States Internal Revenue Code, as amended, from a traditional Individual Retirement Account to a Roth Individual Retirement Account” among the items excluded from Mississippi gross income. That paragraph sets no age test, no dollar cap and no holding period, and the exemption passes to a spouse or other beneficiary at the death of the primary retiree.
Confidence note: high, and higher than for most states in this series — this does not rest on reading a general retirement exclusion broadly, because Mississippi has a paragraph that names a traditional-to-Roth conversion outright. An earlier version of this page told you the cited authority was silent about conversions. That was wrong: our citation was incomplete, not the statute.
Why a conversion is a different question from a withdrawal
Almost every state summary answers “how does Mississippi tax retirement income?” That is a question about distributions. A Roth conversion is not a distribution in the ordinary sense — it is a voluntary election to recognise income now in exchange for tax-free growth later. Whether a state’s retirement exclusion reaches that election is a separate question, and it is the one that decides your bill.
That is exactly why paragraph (ff) matters. “Retirement income is exempt in Mississippi” is a statement about distributions, and on its own it would not settle a conversion. Mississippi did not leave it there: the conversion has its own line in the exclusion list, separate from the paragraphs that exempt retirement allowances and plan distributions.
What the state exclusion does not do is change the federal bill. Paragraph (ff) removes the converted amount from Mississippi gross income; the same conversion is still ordinary income on your federal return, and that is where almost all of the cost sits.
What Mississippi does with the converted amount
State income tax: flat 4% for 2026 (final cut under prior schedule; HB 1 of 2025 continues: 3.75% in 2027, then -0.25%/yr to 3% by 2030, with growth triggers toward elimination). First $10,000 of taxable income exempt.
How Mississippi treats IRA and plan income: Fully exempt: all qualified retirement income — pensions (public/private), 401(k)/403(b), IRA distributions taken per plan terms (normal retirement), annuities. Early/non-qualified distributions are taxable.
What to ask a preparer about Mississippi
Nothing on eligibility — paragraph (ff) settles it. The questions worth your preparer’s time are residency and timing: were you a Mississippi resident on the date of the conversion, and does converting this year or next produce the better federal bracket outcome, since the federal bill is the one the exclusion does not touch.
The state bill is only half the decision
What a conversion costs depends on the federal bracket it fills as well as the state you are resident in when you make it, and an adviser can price both together before you decide how much to convert.
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Converting around a move
Converting in the year you move into Mississippi is the case that catches people. Residency at the moment of conversion is what generally determines which state gets to tax it, so a conversion executed a week before a move and one executed a week after can produce different bills.
Four separate taxes change when you move, not one: income tax on withdrawals, treatment of Social Security, estate tax, and inheritance tax. A state that looks good on conversions can be worse on the other three.
The state bill is the smaller half
Whatever Mississippi does, the conversion is federal ordinary income first. The federal bracket you land in, and whether the conversion pushes you over an IRMAA threshold two years later, will usually move more money than the state line does. The state answer tells you whether to convert here; the federal answer tells you how much to convert at once.
Paying the tax from outside the account matters more than either. Using converted dollars to pay the bill shrinks the balance that was the entire point of converting.
Sources
Authority: Miss. Code § 27-7-15(4)(ff) — amounts converted from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, 2010 taxable year forward; this is the paragraph that decides this page. Also § 27-7-15(4)(k) and (4)(l) (retirement allowances and public/private plan distributions generally); HB 1 (2025), ‘Build Up Mississippi Act’.
Paragraph (ff) read in full at the source on August 12, 2026: Mississippi Legislature, HB 4073 (2026 Regular Session), Section 14, which sets out § 27-7-15 as amended. Compiled from state statutes, session laws and revenue-department publications and adversarially verified in July 2026. Dataset confidence for Mississippi: high.
This page states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice, and a conversion large enough to matter is worth putting in front of a preparer who can see your whole return.