What changes for my taxes and my move when I leave Illinois for Florida?

On the 2025 return, that rate applies after a personal exemption of $2,850 a person, plus $1,000 for someone 65 or older and $1,000 for someone legally blind.

Early distributions from qualified plans and IRAs may be subtracted too. The publication says you may not subtract third-party sick pay, income from deferred compensation and disability plans that are not government plans, or ordinary income from a qualified plan for which you chose the federal Special 10-Year Averaging Method on Form 4972.

The department treats you as a resident if you were domiciled in Illinois for the whole year, and it describes domicile as the place where you live and intend to come back to after a temporary absence. Temporary absences from Illinois do not make you a part-year resident. In the department's own example, a man who moved to Illinois from Missouri during the year registered his car in Illinois, got an Illinois driver's license and registered to vote there, and so was a part-year resident.

In the year you leave, you file Form IL-1040 with Schedule NR if you had income while a resident, had Illinois income after you left, or want back Illinois tax that was withheld. Schedule NR asks for the date you actually moved out. The instructions say that as a nonresident, your pensions and annuities are not taxed by Illinois; for the part of the year before the move, you report the pensions you received as a resident. In later years, a nonresident must file if he or she had enough Illinois-source income to owe tax, or is owed a refund of Illinois tax withheld in error.

Illinois also has an estate tax. The Illinois Attorney General's fact sheet sets the exclusion at $4,000,000. For both resident and nonresident decedents, the tax is first figured as if every asset were in Illinois and then multiplied by the share of the assets that are in Illinois, so property kept in Illinois can still count after a move. An estate with less than all of its assets in Illinois completes the Form 700 Addendum. The Attorney General's Estate Tax Section answers at 312-814-2491 in Chicago and 217-524-5095 in Springfield.

The Weather Service's 1991 to 2020 normals at O'Hare are an average of 25.2 degrees in January and 75.4 in July, 38.4 inches of snow a year, 37.86 inches of precipitation, and 121.3 days a year with a low at or below 32 degrees. Tampa's normal July average for the same years is 83.8 degrees, and its normal precipitation is 49.48 inches a year.

The Illinois Department of Revenue answers at 1-800-732-8866 or 217-782-3336, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Florida's own steps for a driver license, registration and a legal home are in the answers linked below.

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