Crossing a state line into or out of Georgia

Georgia taxes its residents on income earned anywhere, and taxes non-residents on work done inside it. Which return you file depends on which direction you commute.

Georgia borders 5 states. They fall into 2 different situations, and which one applies decides whether you file one return or two.

Where you file a nonresident return and claim a credit

Georgia has no agreement with Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. Work in one of these and you file a nonresident return there, report the same income again to Georgia, and claim a credit for what you already paid. The credit is capped at your Georgia liability, so you are not taxed twice, the combined bill lands at roughly the higher of the two rates.

Work state	Its tax	Georgia after credit	Total	Rate that governs
Alabama	$3,460	$173	$3,633	Georgia
North Carolina	$2,793	$840	$3,633	Georgia
South Carolina	$2,681	$952	$3,633	Georgia

Where the work state takes nothing

Florida and Tennessee levy no personal income tax, so there is no return to file there and no credit to claim. But Georgia still taxes the wages as a resident. The catch is withholding: an employer in Florida or Tennessee has no state income tax to withhold, so nothing is taken out for Georgia either. The liability is real and nothing is being set aside against it, which usually means Georgia estimated payments.

What Georgia itself takes across a salary range

A single filer, taking the standard deduction. This is the figure every arrangement above is measured against, the tax Georgia charges a resident, whether the work happened inside the state or over a line:

Wages	Georgia tax	Effective rate
$45,000	$2,336	5.19%
$70,000	$3,633	5.19%
$120,000	$6,228	5.19%

Coming the other way: living in a no-income-tax state, working in Georgia

Florida and Tennessee border Georgia and levy no personal income tax of their own. A resident of Florida or Tennessee who works in Georgia has the simplest arrangement on this page and the least room to improve it: Georgia taxes the wages earned inside it, $3,633 on $70,000, there is no home-state return, and so there is nothing to claim a credit against. Living across a border that charges nothing does not reduce the Georgia bill by a cent.

Reciprocity cannot help either, even where Georgia has agreements: reciprocity shifts the income to the home state's return, and a state with no income tax has no return to shift it to.

What Georgia charges as your home state

Georgia applies a single 5.19% rate to taxable income for 2026, so every extra dollar of wages is taxed at the same state rate.

On the 2026 rate itself: rate was 5.39%, reduced to 5.19% mid-2025. Further phasedowns planned.

State income tax on wages only, 2026 rates. Not tax advice, what this does and doesn't cover.