Grocery Tax by State in 2026

Five states have no statewide sales tax and therefore no state grocery tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. Of these five, only Alaska allows local grocery taxes, since roughly 100 Alaskan municipalities levy their own sales taxes with no state law to preempt them. The other four collect no retail sales tax at any level of government, making Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon among the most straightforward states for grocery shoppers. Some of these same no-sales-tax states still rely heavily on other local taxes, including property-based systems covered in the disabled veteran property tax exemption guide.

An additional 35 states explicitly exempt grocery food from sales tax even while charging sales tax on most other goods. These exemptions track a legal definition of food for home consumption that excludes hot prepared food, candy, soft drinks, and alcohol. The most recent additions to the exempt category are Illinois (January 1, 2026), Kansas (January 1, 2025), Oklahoma (August 2023), West Virginia (2023), and New Mexico (2023).

Taken together, 40 of 50 states apply no state sales tax to a shopper's weekly grocery basket. That proportion reflects a decades-long trend: in the mid-20th century, most states taxed groceries at the full rate. By 2026, full-rate grocery taxation at the state level is the exception in the United States, not the norm.

Eliminating or reducing a state grocery tax does not automatically eliminate the grocery tax at the local level. Louisiana is the clearest example: the state charges no tax on groceries, but Louisiana parishes set their own tax bases entirely independently, and many of them do tax grocery food, producing a patchwork of local grocery rates with no single statewide answer for shoppers.

Colorado and Arizona face a similar situation. Both states exempt groceries at the state level but allow home-rule cities and counties to define their own tax bases, which can include groceries. Most major cities in these states have repealed local grocery taxes over the years, but the rules still vary by jurisdiction, and a shopper in one city may pay a local grocery tax that a shopper in the next city does not.

States that recently eliminated their state grocery tax (Kansas, Oklahoma, and Illinois) preserved the authority of local governments to tax groceries independently. A shopper in Overland Park, Kansas or Springfield, Illinois may still pay a local grocery tax on their receipt even though the state no longer adds one. That local-state split is similar to how annual car property taxes often vary by county even when the state framework is uniform.

Every state that exempts grocery food still taxes restaurant meals and prepared food separately. The legal line between the two categories matters more than most shoppers realize: in most states, a cold rotisserie chicken at a grocery store qualifies as exempt food, while the same item sold hot or with utensils provided by the seller is taxable prepared food. The distinction typically turns on whether food is sold hot, ready to eat, or accompanied by eating utensils.

New Hampshire makes the point clearly: the state has no general sales tax and no grocery tax whatsoever, yet imposes an 8.5% meals and rooms tax specifically on restaurant purchases. Vermont exempts groceries entirely but taxes restaurant meals at 9%, one of the highest dedicated meal tax rates in the country.

Most states with grocery exemptions follow the Streamlined Sales Tax definition of food, which places candy, soft drinks, dietary supplements, and prepared food outside the grocery exemption. A grocery cart in an exempt state can still contain a handful of taxable items alongside the tax-free produce and dairy; the taxable portion of the total depends on exactly what is in the cart.

The largest grocery tax change taking effect in 2026 is Illinois, which eliminated its 1% state grocery tax on January 1, 2026. Illinois had applied the 1% rate to food sold for home consumption for decades, treating it separately from the standard 6.25% sales tax on other goods. Municipal and local sales taxes on food may still apply in some Illinois jurisdictions, since the state change did not extend to local levies.

Kansas completed its own grocery tax phasedown one year earlier. The state reduced the grocery rate from 6.5% in 2022 to 4% in 2023, then to 2% in 2024, and finally to 0% on January 1, 2025. The three-year elimination was driven by broad bipartisan agreement that a grocery tax falls disproportionately on lower-income households, who spend a higher share of their incomes on food than higher-income households do.

Earlier in the same period, Oklahoma and West Virginia eliminated their state grocery taxes in 2023, and New Mexico restructured its gross receipts tax to exempt food for home consumption the same year. The five-year arc is consistent: the list of states fully taxing groceries at their general sales tax rate has contracted to just four (Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, and South Dakota), down from roughly twice that number at the start of the decade.