What New York residents actually pay
New York taxes ordinary income at a top marginal rate of 10.9%. RSU settlement value, NSO exercise spread, and ESPP discount income all count as ordinary wages for this purpose and flow through the state's normal brackets.
NYC residents pay an additional ~3.9% city tax. Trailing nexus rules aggressively tax post-move equity.
The trailing nexus problem
You move out of a high-tax state. Your RSUs keep vesting. Who gets to tax them? In most states with nonresident-income rules, the answer is: both, on a workday-allocation basis. A tranche vesting today, covering a grant made before you moved, is split between your old state and your new one in proportion to workdays.
What to tell payroll
Employer payroll systems will usually withhold for your current work state only. That's technically wrong if any portion was earned in the prior state. The correction happens at filing, via nonresident returns and a resident credit for taxes paid elsewhere.
Frequently asked
- Does New York tax RSU income the same as wages?
- Yes. New York treats RSU ordinary income as wages, taxable at the state's top marginal rate of 10.9%. Supplemental-wage federal withholding (22%, or 37% above $1M YTD) does not adjust for state withholding, so you often owe extra at filing.
- What happens if I exercise ISOs while living in New York?
- New York does not run a separate state AMT, so only federal AMT applies. You still need to model the bargain element carefully if you plan a cashless exercise-and-sell.
- I moved to New York from another state. Who taxes my vesting RSUs?
- Most high-tax states (CA, NY, MA) source RSU ordinary income to workdays between grant and vest. If your grant pre-dates your New York move, expect the old state to tax the portion of each tranche attributable to workdays earned there. New York taxes the remainder.
- Can I reduce New York taxes by timing my RSU sales?
- New York taxes long-term capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income, so timing alone does not produce a state savings — only federal. Holding for 12 months still halves the federal rate on gains above basis.
Related
- RSU taxes — New York
- ISO exercises and AMT — New York
- Capital gains tax — New York
- QSBS — New York
- RSU vesting schedules — New York
- ESPP taxation — New York
- NSO exercises and state tax — New York
- 401(k) and retirement accounts — New York
- Leaving New York: how to cleanly break residency before a liquidity event — New York
- New York equity-comp overview