Income Taxes in West Virginia
West Virginia's income tax is a five-bracket graduated system actively falling under a real, ongoing legislative and trigger-based cut regime -- a 4.58% top rate for 2026 after Senate Bill 392's flat 5% reduction, with further trigger-based cuts a real, disclosed possibility -- paired with a full, newly-completed exemption of Social Security income, a genuinely substantial retiree benefit.
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Learn moreA five-bracket system, and it's the product of an active, ongoing cut regime
West Virginia's individual income tax runs five graduated brackets for tax year 2026, identical across all filing statuses: 2.11% on taxable income up to $10,000; $211 plus 2.81% of the excess over $10,000 up to $25,000; $632.50 plus 3.16% of the excess over $25,000 up to $40,000; $1,106.50 plus 4.22% of the excess over $40,000 up to $60,000; and $1,950.50 plus a top marginal rate of 4.58% on income above $60,000. This record verifies 4.58% as the current, correct 2026 top rate -- corroborated across Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg Tax, EY's tax-news service, and Americans for Tax Reform's contemporaneous 2026 coverage -- rather than the 4.82% figure some slower-to-update aggregator sources still show for 2026.
How West Virginia got to 4.58%, and why further cuts remain a real possibility
2023's House Bill 2526, signed by then-Governor Jim Justice on March 7, 2023, cut rates by an average of 21.25% immediately (the old 3%/4%/4.5%/6%/6.5% brackets became 2.36%/3.15%/3.54%/4.72%/5.12%) and wrote a real, ongoing revenue-triggered mechanism -- capped at a 10% cut per fiscal year -- for further automatic annual reductions whenever general revenue collections, net of severance tax, exceed a fiscal-year-2019 baseline adjusted for inflation. That trigger fired for tax year 2025, bringing the top rate to 4.82%, and a further, direct legislative cut -- Senate Bill 392, a flat 5% reduction across every bracket, signed in spring 2026 and made effective June 12, 2026 retroactive to January 1, 2026 -- brought the current, verified top rate to 4.58%. Because the underlying trigger mechanism remains active, this record discloses further cuts beyond 2026 as a real possibility rather than treating 4.58% as necessarily final.
Social Security is now fully, unconditionally exempt
West Virginia completed a real, dated, three-year phase-out of state taxation on Social Security benefits: 35% of Social Security income was exempt for tax year 2024, 65% for tax year 2025, and a full 100% for tax year 2026, the final year of the phase-in. This record verifies that 100% exemption as West Virginia's current law for 2026, with no income cap -- a real, disclosed, substantial retiree benefit given the state's genuinely older population (a 42.9-year median age, the fourth-oldest in the nation, with 21.9% of residents aged 65 or older).
West Virginia's income-tax picture sits in a moderate-to-low national range
This record discloses that West Virginia's 2026 top rate (4.58%) sits in a genuinely moderate-to-low range nationally among states with a graduated income tax, though not among the nine states with no income tax at all -- so this record does not apply a LOW_INCOME_TAX or HIGH_INCOME_TAX tag. West Virginia's unemployment rate ran a real, moderate 4.2% (seasonally adjusted) as of June 2026, a useful backdrop for weighing the state's tax trajectory against its broader labor-market picture.
Key takeaways
- West Virginia's 2026 income tax runs five brackets from 2.11% to a 4.58% top rate on income above $60,000, reached via 2026's SB 392 flat 5% cut layered onto 2023's HB 2526 trigger-cut regime.
- The underlying revenue-trigger mechanism (capped at 10% per fiscal year) remains active, so further cuts beyond 2026 are a real, disclosed possibility.
- Social Security income has been 100% exempt from West Virginia state income tax since tax year 2026, the final year of a three-year phase-in, with no income cap.
- West Virginia's income tax sits in a genuinely moderate-to-low national range among states with a graduated tax, though the state is not among the nine with no income tax at all.
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