Compare two states properly

Comparing two states on tax alone gets the answer wrong

The standard version of this page says one state has no income tax and stops. It is true and it is close to useless, because the states without an income tax raise the money somewhere else — usually on your house.

California to Texas is the clearest case. The state income tax difference on $100,000 is $5,055. The property tax difference is $2,186 and it runs the other way. Net of both, take-home moves by $2,869 — a fraction of the number the income tax rate implies.

Then there is what a dollar buys. California sits at 110.7 on the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index and Arkansas at 86.9, where 100 is the national average — a spread of 23.8 points. Ignoring that is comparing two currencies at face value.

So every page here works in purchasing power: take-home after federal, FICA, state, local and property tax, divided by the price level where you would be spending it. It is the only unit in which two states can honestly be put side by side.

And the number nobody publishes: what you would have to earn

The question behind almost every one of these searches is not "which is cheaper". It is "I have an offer — is it enough?"

Every comparison here solves that directly. On $100,000 in California, matching your standard of living in Texas takes $83,469 — 16.5% less than you earn now, so there is room to take a pay cut and come out level.

It is solved by inverting the calculation rather than scaling it, because brackets, the Social Security ceiling and a property tax that does not move with income all break the straight line. A rule of thumb gets it wrong by thousands at exactly the salary where people are negotiating.

The pairs people search for, ranked by what the move is actually worth

On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, at each state's median county property tax rate. Change any of that on the page itself and the ranking changes with it:

Florida vs New York — Florida by $12,947 a year, $129,470 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $10,652.

California vs Nevada — Nevada by $12,734 a year, $127,341 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $5,842.

California vs Texas — Texas by $11,977 a year, $119,767 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $2,869.

Arizona vs California — Arizona by $10,088 a year, $100,875 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $3,717.

California vs Florida — Florida by $9,310 a year, $93,103 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $4,925.

California vs Colorado — Colorado by $7,307 a year, $73,072 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $2,638.

Maryland vs Virginia — Virginia by $6,161 a year, $61,613 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $3,702.

Oregon vs Washington — Washington by $5,084 a year, $50,841 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $7,815.

Colorado vs Texas — Texas by $4,670 a year, $46,695 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $231.

California vs New York — California by $3,637 a year, $36,367 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $5,728.

Florida vs Texas — Texas by $2,666 a year, $26,664 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $2,056.

California vs Oregon — Oregon by $1,562 a year, $15,618 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $3,087.

North Carolina vs South Carolina — South Carolina by $824 a year, $8,236 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $308.

New Jersey vs New York — New Jersey by $51 a year, $514 over 10 years. Take-home alone would say $603.

Those are the 14 pairs with measurable search volume. All 1275 exist — every combination of the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and the fastest way in is your own state's index below, which resolves its 50 comparisons on one page and ranks them.

Start with the state you are in

Each of these resolves all 50 comparisons out of that state at once and ranks them, so you can see the best and worst destination side by side instead of opening pairs one at a time. Each also publishes the figure that justifies this whole section: how many of the 50 the take-home number gets the direction wrong on.

California vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 110.7, housing 154.3.

Hawaii vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 110, housing 125.3.

District of Columbia vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 109.9, housing 155.

New Jersey vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 108.8, housing 134.3.

New York vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 107.9, housing 122.2.

Washington vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 107, housing 126.

Massachusetts vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 105.8, housing 128.1.

Maryland vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 105, housing 121.1.

New Hampshire vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 104.2, housing 114.9.

Connecticut vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 103.6, housing 117.

Florida vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 103.4, housing 122.1.

Oregon vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 103.4, housing 108.6.

Colorado vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 103.1, housing 127.4.

Alaska vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 102.4, housing 93.8.

Rhode Island vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 102.3, housing 105.6.

Virginia vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 101.1, housing 106.8.

Arizona vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 100.7, housing 106.8.

Illinois vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 100, housing 93.9.

Nevada vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 100, housing 114.1.

Delaware vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 99.8, housing 102.

Utah vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 98.9, housing 107.8.

Minnesota vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 98.6, housing 91.3.

Vermont vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 98, housing 86.5.

Pennsylvania vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 97.6, housing 85.1.

Texas vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 97.1, housing 96.5.

Maine vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 97, housing 78.9.

Georgia vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 96.3, housing 88.7.

Michigan vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 96.2, housing 82.3.

Idaho vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 95.5, housing 90.

Montana vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 94.6, housing 84.6.

North Carolina vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 94.3, housing 81.4.

Wisconsin vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 94.1, housing 79.3.

South Carolina vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 93.7, housing 80.5.

Indiana vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 93.3, housing 73.9.

Ohio vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 92.8, housing 73.

Wyoming vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 92.7, housing 71.1.

New Mexico vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 92.2, housing 73.6.

Tennessee vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 91.9, housing 79.1.

Missouri vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 90.8, housing 69.9.

Kentucky vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 90.2, housing 64.3.

Kansas vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 90.1, housing 71.2.

Nebraska vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 90.1, housing 75.2.

West Virginia vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 89.5, housing 54.2.

North Dakota vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 89, housing 71.4.

Alabama vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 88.8, housing 61.8.

South Dakota vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 88.6, housing 67.6.

Louisiana vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 88.2, housing 63.1.

Iowa vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 87.8, housing 65.3.

Oklahoma vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 87.8, housing 62.8.

Mississippi vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 87, housing 56.5.

Arkansas vs every state — 50 comparisons, price level 86.9, housing 58.2.

Ordered by price level, dearest first, because that is the variable most people are underweighting when they start.

A state is not a place: Texas property tax runs from 0.33% to 2.09%

Property tax is set by counties, not states, and the spread inside a single state is routinely larger than the gap between two states.

Texas has 250 counties. The effective rate runs from 0.33% in Crockett County to 2.09% in El Paso County — 6.3 times, or $7,013 a year on a $400,000 home. "Moving to Texas" is not one financial decision.

Which is why every comparison here lets you pick the county on both sides, and defaults to the median rather than the average — the distribution is skewed, and nobody moves to the average county.

The same is true of income tax in eleven states, where counties and cities levy their own on top. In Maryland that runs to 3.20% by county, which is larger than most state-to-state differences and is missing from essentially every comparison published.

Where the cost of living number comes from, and why it is not Numbeo

Comparison sites almost universally use a crowd-sourced cost of living database. It is filled in by users, publishes no methodology, and cannot be cited.

These pages use the Regional Price Parities published by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis: an official index of price levels for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 389 metro areas, with a published methodology and an annual release. 100 is the national average.

It also comes broken into components, which is the part that decides moves. Housing swings several times more than anything else — California is at 154.3 for housing against 106.1 for goods — so a single blended index hides exactly the variable people are actually weighing.

The figures are the 2024 release, the most recent published, and they are not extrapolated to the current year. Every page says so.

Sources and limits

Four sources, each read off the body that publishes it:

US Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities by State and Metro Area, 2024 (released 19 February 2026) — read 2026-09-08. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

IRS — Revenue Procedure for the tax year (federal brackets, standard deduction and FICA) — read 2026-09-02. https://www.irs.gov/

Each state's own department of revenue (state income tax rates and deductions), verified one state at a time — read 2026-09-02. https://estimatetax.net/sources/

US Census Bureau, American Community Survey (county effective property tax rates) — read 2026-08-31. https://data.census.gov/

And what these comparisons do not model:

— The cost of living index is the BEA's Regional Price Parity for 2024, the most recent published. It is not extrapolated to the current year, and it is a state-wide average — inside a state, a metro area and a rural county differ by more than most state pairs do.

— Moving costs, state transfer taxes on buying a home, and the cost of selling the one you have are not included. On a short stay they can outweigh every annual difference on this page.

— Sales tax is not modelled. It is inside the BEA index — that is what a price parity measures — but it is not broken out separately here.

— The comparison assumes the same salary in both places unless you change it. In practice a job in a high-cost state usually pays more, which is exactly what the break-even figure is for.

— Health insurance, childcare and car insurance vary enormously by state and are only inside the index as averages. If any of the three is a large part of your budget, it deserves its own arithmetic.

Questions

Which state is cheapest to live in?

Arkansas, on the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index — 86.9 against a national average of 100, and California at the other end on 110.7. But the index is only half of it: the cheapest state to live in is not the cheapest to earn in, which is why these pages work in take-home after tax divided by the price level rather than in either one alone.

Is it better to live in a state with no income tax?

Not automatically. Those states raise the money elsewhere, usually on property. In California vs Texas the income tax difference is $5,055 and the property tax difference is $2,186 in the opposite direction. The answer depends on your salary and the house you would buy, which is what the calculator asks for.

How much more do I need to earn to move to a more expensive state?

Each comparison solves that exactly, by inverting the calculation rather than scaling it. Brackets, the Social Security ceiling and a fixed property tax all break the proportion, so a multiplier gets it wrong by thousands at the salaries where people negotiate.

Do you include property tax?

Yes, by county rather than by state average, from Census data on tax actually paid over median home value. It matters more than most people expect: inside Texas alone the effective rate varies 6.3 times between counties.

Where does your cost of living data come from?

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, 2024 release — an official index for every state and metro area, broken into housing, goods, utilities and services. Not a crowd-sourced database.

Does this include moving costs?

No, and they matter. Removal costs, agent fees and transfer taxes land entirely in year one and on a short stay can outweigh every annual difference on these pages. Set the number of years to your real horizon.