Colorado to North Carolina Retirement Taxes (2025): $180 Lower
Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: On one deliberately uniform benchmark – a single filer with exactly $120,000 of 2025 state taxable income in each jurisdiction, before credits – North Carolina’s base result is about $180 lower than Colorado’s. This is a rate-schedule comparison, not a claim about what a particular retiree will owe.
At $120,000 of state taxable income: North Carolina is $180 lower than Colorado
- Colorado
- 4.4% × $120,000 = $5,280.
- North Carolina
- 4.25% × $120,000 = $5,100.
- Destination minus origin
- $5,100.00 − $5,280.00 = -$180.00; the absolute whole-dollar gap is $180.
The input is state taxable income, not gross income, adjusted gross income, a pension, or an IRA withdrawal. State adjustments determine that input before these published rate formulas are applied. This benchmark intentionally excludes credits and every tax outside the basic individual-income-tax calculation, so lower describes only this controlled comparison.
The archived directional-flow row for Colorado to North Carolina
In Census Table T13, workbook row 1796 places North Carolina in the current-residence column and Colorado in the residence-one-year-ago column. Its 2024 estimate is 7,031, with a margin of error of ±2,178; the point estimate exceeds that margin.
The archived IRS outflow row for the same direction reports n1=3,423, n2=5,995, and AGI=289,070 in the file’s own fields. We leave those field names intact instead of relabeling them as retirees.
Neither archived directional row contains a retirement-status field. They support the corridor direction; they do not establish retiree demand, a retirement move count, or a tax saving.
Price the move against the rest of your money
A state-to-state comparison shows you which taxes change, not what to do about the accounts, the house and the timing sitting behind them, and an adviser can look at those together before a move is set in motion.
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How to use this comparison without turning it into a forecast
First determine the state taxable-income input under each jurisdiction’s return. Then apply the relevant schedule, and only then account for credits or taxes outside this benchmark. If the two taxable-income inputs differ, the gap will differ too.
- Use the same $120,000 input only to reproduce this page’s arithmetic.
- Do not read $180 as a household saving or moving recommendation; it is the absolute difference between two controlled base-tax calculations.
- Recheck the official schedules for the filing year you are actually comparing.
Keep the pair, origin, and destination owners separate
This leaf owns only the exact Colorado-to-North Carolina comparison. Use the Colorado origin hub for other destinations, the North Carolina destination hub for other origins, or the retirement-tax relocation hub to start over.
Primary sources used for the benchmark
- Book 104 2025 Colorado Individual Income Tax Filing Guide (Colorado Department of Revenue).
- North Carolina 2025 D-401 instructions, individual tax rate.
- U.S. Census Bureau 2024 State-to-State Migration Table T13.
- IRS Statistics of Income state-to-state outflow file, filing years 2022-2023.
Methodology: Clear Money Guide applied the two published 2025 base-tax formulas to one exact $120,000 state-taxable-income input, retained the unrounded results, and rounded only the displayed whole-dollar amounts. This is general information, not personalized tax, legal, or financial advice.