Moving to Missouri

Missouri taxes residents on everything and nonresidents on what they earn in Missouri, and the year you move you are both. The part-year return is the ordinary Form MO-1040, computed first as if you had lived in Missouri all year, with every subtraction and the full standard deduction, and then cut down in one of two ways. Form MO-NRI works out the share of your income that belongs to Missouri, the part earned while you lived here plus any Missouri-source income from the rest of the year, and multiplies the full-year tax by that percentage. Form MO-CR instead keeps the full-year tax and gives a credit for income tax you paid to the other state on the same income. You pick whichever gives the lower tax; the Department says you cannot use both. Missouri has no reciprocal agreement with any neighbor, so a Missouri resident who commutes into another state files there first and claims the credit here, and a resident of another state who commutes into Missouri files a Missouri nonresident return on the wages. Wages are taxed where the work is physically done, which is also the rule the two city earnings taxes follow.

Who is a resident

The Missouri definition has two prongs. You are a resident if you are domiciled in Missouri, meaning Missouri is your one permanent home, the place you intend to return to when you are away. You are also a resident, even if domiciled elsewhere, if you kept a permanent place of abode in Missouri and spent more than 183 days of the year in the state. A person can have only one domicile at a time. The exception runs the other way too: a Missouri domiciliary who has no permanent quarters in Missouri, keeps quarters elsewhere and spends 30 days or less in Missouri during the year is treated as a nonresident for that year. A nonresident is anyone who meets neither test. A nonresident with more than $600 of Missouri-source income must file; a resident files above $1,200.

Domicile is the test that matters when a move is disputed, and it is decided by facts: where your family lives, where you vote, where your license and car are registered, which house you call home. Someone who moves to Missouri in June and keeps the old house for sale through December became a resident in June if the rest of life moved with them.

The move-year return: MO-NRI or MO-CR

A part-year resident files Form MO-1040 and reports total federal adjusted gross income on line 1, exactly as a full-year resident would. The Missouri subtractions on Form MO-A come off, including the capital gains subtraction, and Missouri AGI, the federal tax deduction and the standard deduction are figured on the whole year. The tax on the result is the full-year tax. Then one of two forms reduces it.

Form MO-NRI computes the Missouri income percentage: the income earned while you were a resident, plus Missouri-source income earned while you were not, divided by your total income. The full-year tax times that percentage is the Missouri tax. Because the standard deduction and the low brackets were already in the full-year figure, the percentage effectively prorates them. This is the form for a move from or to a state with no income tax, and it is usually the better form when the other state’s tax was low.

Form MO-CR leaves the full-year tax alone and credits the income tax you paid to another state on income that both states taxed. The credit is the lesser of the tax actually paid to the other state or the Missouri tax on that same income, so it never refunds the other state’s higher rate, and it is zero if the other state has no income tax; the Department’s own example says a mover from a no-tax state is not eligible for the resident credit at all. Attach the other state’s return.

No reciprocity, in either direction

Missouri has no reciprocal income tax agreement with any state. The consequence depends on which side of the line you sleep.

You live in Missouri and work in another state. You file a nonresident return in the work state and pay its tax on the wages, then file Form MO-1040 as a full-year resident reporting all income, and attach Form MO-CR to credit the other state’s tax, limited to Missouri’s 4.7% on the same wages. If the other state’s rate is higher you pay the difference to it and nothing more to Missouri on those wages; if lower, you pay the difference to Missouri. Ask the work-state employer to withhold for that state, and check whether Missouri withholding is also needed for the gap.

You live in another state and work in Missouri. You file Form MO-1040 with MO-NRI as a nonresident, reporting your total federal AGI and paying Missouri tax on the Missouri percentage, and claim a credit on your home state’s return if it allows one. Your Missouri employer withholds Missouri tax on your Missouri wages. A nonresident who itemizes and deducted property tax paid to a home state that gives Missouri residents no comparable break must add that property tax back on Form MO-A; the Department’s list of such states includes Illinois, Texas, Florida, Washington and Wyoming, among others.

Remote work across the line

Missouri sources wages to where the work is physically performed. It has no convenience-of-the-employer rule, so a Missouri resident who works from home for an out-of-state employer has Missouri wages, and a resident of another state who works from home for a Missouri employer has no Missouri-source wages for the days worked at home. Payroll departments do not always get this right; a W-2 showing Missouri wages for a year worked from a home in another state is corrected on the nonresident return with a day-count, and the employee should ask for the withholding to be fixed. Keep a calendar; the day-count is the evidence.

The Kansas City and St. Louis earnings taxes

Kansas City and the City of St. Louis each tax earnings at 1%, on their own returns, and both follow the same physical-presence rule as the state. A resident of either city pays on all earnings wherever earned. A nonresident pays on wages for work performed inside the city limits. Employers withhold it and report it in box 19 of the W-2, usually on every paycheck regardless of where the work was done. A nonresident who worked some days outside the city, from a home in the suburbs or on the road, gets the tax on those days back by filing a refund claim: Form RD-109NR in Kansas City, due by the federal filing deadline, and Form E-1R in St. Louis, which began accepting remote-work refund claims after litigation in 2024. Both taxes were renewed by voters on April 7, 2026 for another five years. A Kansas resident commuting into downtown Kansas City therefore files three returns on the wages: Kansas as a resident, Missouri as a nonresident, and the Kansas City earnings tax return or refund claim. The earnings tax is not a credit against Missouri tax, though it stays in the Missouri itemized deduction for those who itemize. See the earnings tax section of How Missouri income tax works.

Retirees who move

A retiree who becomes a Missouri resident brings the Social Security exemption at 62 and the capital gains subtraction with them from the first day, and brings the 4.7% tax on IRA and 401(k) withdrawals too. Federal law bars a former state from taxing the retirement income of someone who no longer lives there, so a pension earned elsewhere is taxed by Missouri alone once you are a Missouri resident, under Missouri’s rules: exempt if it is military retirement, exempt up to $48,967 less Social Security claimed if it is from a government employer, and taxed with at most a $6,000 exemption if it is private. A retiree leaving Missouri stops owing Missouri tax on retirement income the day residency ends. In the move year, pension and IRA payments are split by the date received, and the senior property tax freeze, where the county has adopted it, follows the home, not the person: apply at the new county after you arrive. The details are in Missouri for retirees.

Military

A servicemember whose home of record is outside Missouri, stationed here, who keeps no permanent Missouri quarters beyond the duty station, maintains quarters elsewhere and spends no more than 30 days of personal time in Missouri, is a nonresident, and military pay is not Missouri income. A Missouri-domiciled servicemember stationed elsewhere remains a resident but deducts active-duty pay in full on MO-1040 line 18.

The year you move: a checklist

• Fix the date. Residency changes on the day your domicile changes, not the day the lease ends or the house closes. Write it down with the facts that support it.
• Split wages by the date, not by employer. A W-2 from one employer covering both sides of the move is allocated by pay dates; ask payroll for a year-to-date figure at the move.
• Split everything else by the date received: interest, dividends, pension and IRA payments, unemployment.
• Record a capital gain in the year it happened and subtract it on MO-A line 18 either way; Missouri does not tax it, resident or not.
• File the other state’s part-year return first, so the tax paid there is known before choosing MO-NRI or MO-CR.
• Compute both forms and keep the lower result.
• File a new Form MO W-4 with your employer on arrival, and stop the old state’s withholding.
• If your new or old address is in Kansas City or St. Louis, check box 19 of the W-2 and your day-count for the earnings tax.
• If you made estimated payments to the old state, do not expect Missouri to see them; Missouri payments start with the first voucher after the move, and the $100 rule applies to Missouri tax alone.
• Keep the old state’s return, the closing statement on the old house, the lease or deed on the new one, the new license and voter registration together.