Retirement income planning in Chattanooga, where the state taxes none of it.
Robert Boeck is based in Chattanooga and works with households across the country by Zoom. Your state’s tax rules are the main way your address changes your plan.
What does Tennessee change about a retirement plan?
Tennessee has no state income tax on wages or on retirement income. It phased out the Hall tax on interest and dividends, its last individual income tax, and repealed it for tax periods beginning January 1, 2021.
For someone approaching retirement, the effect shows up first in the cost of a Roth conversion. A conversion done as a Tennessee resident carries federal tax only. In a state with a 5% income tax, the same $150,000 conversion carries another $7,500. You make that choice in the conversion window between your last paycheck and your first required minimum distribution, at 73, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later.
Capital gains work the same way: Tennessee does not tax a gain you realize after you become a resident. Pay you earned in another state can follow you: your former state can still tax deferred compensation and equity awards you earned while working there. Federal law bars it from taxing deferred compensation paid in equal installments over ten years or more. If a move to Tennessee is in your plan, work out the timing of each before you move.
What does it cost to retire in Chattanooga?
You pay local costs on what you buy and what you own. Purchases in Chattanooga carry 9.25% sales tax, the state’s 7% plus Hamilton County’s 2.25%, and groceries 6.25%. Inside the city, the 2025 property tax rate was $3.4457 per $100 of assessed value, county and city together, and Tennessee assesses a home at 25% of its appraised value. A home appraised at $283,000, close to the city’s median value of $283,200, pays about $2,440 a year.
The City of Chattanooga lets homeowners 65 or older freeze its share of that tax at the amount for the year they qualify, under a 2026 income limit of $63,470. Hamilton County has not adopted the freeze, so its share can still rise.
In the Census Bureau’s survey for 2020 to 2024, 17.3% of Chattanooga’s residents were 65 or older. In December 2025, 64,485 people in Hamilton County drew Social Security retirement benefits, an average of about $2,143 a month by our arithmetic on the Social Security Administration’s county totals.
That average comes to about $25,700 a year. Spending above it comes from savings, so a plan sets your Social Security claiming age and the order you draw your savings together.
Who are Robert’s clients?
Pre-retirees aged 50 and older, most within two to eight years of their retirement date, with $750,000 or more in retirement assets. If you are moving to Tennessee from a state with an income tax, you have the most to gain from getting the sequencing right before the move rather than after.
The work itself is the same wherever you are: withdrawal sequencing, Social Security claiming for both spouses, RMD exposure and IRMAA thresholds, pulled into one plan rather than decided one at a time.
The same planning is open to households across the Chattanooga area, from Signal Mountain and Lookout Mountain to Ooltewah, Hixson and East Ridge.
How do meetings work?
By Zoom. The first conversation takes thirty minutes, with both spouses where that applies. The process is the same whether you live in Chattanooga or across the country.
Knoxville, Nashville, Franklin, Memphis, Tullahoma and Crossville
Pages for more Tennessee places cover what is specific there: Knoxville, where TVA has its headquarters; Nashville, where teachers and state employees choose how their TCRS pension pays; Franklin and Brentwood, where several companies have their headquarters; Memphis, Germantown and Collierville, where FedEx has its headquarters; Tullahoma and Manchester, around Arnold Air Force Base and its federal pensions; and Crossville and Fairfield Glade, where most residents have already retired.
Questions about planning from Chattanooga
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