Nevada‘s tax system ranks 17th overall on the 2025 State Tax Competitiveness Index. Nevada forgoes both individual and corporate income taxes, though it levies a low-rate payroll tax (for purposes other than unemployment insurance) that exclusively taxes wage income, and places a low multi-rate gross receipts tax, the Commerce Tax, on businesses. The Commerce Tax is structurally unsound, as it taxes gross revenue rather than profits, but it is imposed at rates low enough to make the tax’s distortions less damaging.
Nevada’s sales tax is higher than average, as an offset for not levying broad-based income taxes. Its remote seller threshold takes the number of transactions into account, whereas best practice is to adopt a dollar-denominated threshold. The state does not impose a capital stock tax, and, absent income taxes, avoids many of the structural questions faced by other states. However, the state’s unemployment insurance tax regime is relatively uncompetitive.
From 2021-2024, within the span of 3.5 years, more states enacted laws converting graduated-rate individual income tax structures into single-rate income tax structures than did so in the whole 108-year history of state income taxation up until that point.
Thirty-nine states will begin 2025 with notable tax changes, including nine states cutting individual income taxes. Recent years have seen a wave of significant tax reforms, and the changes scheduled for 2025 show that these efforts have not let up.