Alaska vs Kansas
A tax calculator says the difference is $8,100 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Kansas is $1,184 ahead — $11,839 over 10 years.
Property tax is set by counties, not states. Inside Texas alone the rate varies six times over, so this is the single choice that changes the answer most.
Does it work everywhere in Kansas?
in what the money buys · $11,839 over 10 years
A pay cut of up to $1,647 (1.6%) still leaves you level.
Who worked this out, and what it is built on
I build and maintain every comparison on this site — 1275 state pairs so far, on the same engine that runs the tax calculators for all 50 states and 3,143 counties. This is not a template with two names swapped into it: Alaska and Kansas are run through the actual rules of each place, and if the numbers say the move is not worth it, that is what the page says.
Four sources, and one deliberate refusal. Federal figures from the IRS revenue procedure. State rates read one state at a time off each state’s own department of revenue. County property tax from the US Census Bureau. Cost of living from the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, 2024 — and not from Numbeo or any other crowd-sourced index, because those are filled in by users, publish no methodology, and cannot be cited. That single choice is most of why the cost-of-living numbers here differ from everybody else’s.
When I get something wrong I publish the correction with the date and what it cost — including the two mistakes on these pages I found myself. Data last verified September 1, 2026.
Where to go from here
Almost nobody is choosing between exactly two places. These are the questions that usually come next, with the answer already attached so you can see which is worth opening.
Other moves involving Alaska or Kansas
States that sit near Kansas on prices compared against Alaska, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Alaska vs Nebraska— Nebraska by $3,678
- Alaska vs Kentucky— Kentucky by $6,324
- Alaska vs West Virginia— West Virginia by $7,437
- Kansas vs Rhode Island— Kansas by $6,761
- Colorado vs Kansas— Kansas by $3,987
- Florida vs Kansas— Kansas by $1,984
Each state on its own
The full detail behind each half of the comparison above.
The counties that decide it
Property tax is set by county, and the spread inside one state beats most state pairs.
- Copper River Census Area, Alaska— 0.08%, the cheapest
- Dillingham Census Area, Alaska— 1.76%, the dearest
- Nemaha County, Kansas— 0.98%, the cheapest
- Stanton County, Kansas— 2.47%, the dearest
Similar in price to Alaska
States that sit next to Alaska on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Florida— 103.4 on prices
- Oregon— 103.4 on prices
- Colorado— 103.1 on prices
- Rhode Island— 102.3 on prices
- Every Alaska comparison— all 50
- Every Kansas comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
A tax calculator says Alaska. The right answer is Kansas, by $1,184 a year
This is one of the 324 state pairs out of 1,275 where the two answers point at different states, and it is worth understanding why before trusting any comparison of these two. On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, Alaska leaves you $8,100 more in take-home. That figure is correct. It is also the wrong basis for the decision.
Because Alaska is the more expensive place to spend it. On the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index Alaska is 102.4 and Kansas is 90.1, national average 100. Deflate each take-home by where it gets spent and the ranking inverts: $74,525 in Alaska against $75,709 in Kansas. Kansas wins by $1,184 a year — the opposite state to the one the tax figure names, and $11,839 over 10 years.
Where the two sit nationally: Alaska is the 14th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Kansas is 41st. Housing, the component that moves most, is 93.8 against 71.2.
Grey columns are what a year of Alaska and a year of Kansas are worth in the same money. The bars between them are each thing that changes, in the order it changes: green adds, amber takes away.
Why the two answers disagree, and which one to use
It is worth being precise about what is happening here, because "the cost of living is higher" is the kind of phrase that gets used to wave away an inconvenient number, and this is not that.
Both figures are correct measurements of different things. Take-home answers: how many dollars land in your account? Alaska wins that, by $8,100. Purchasing power answers: how much can those dollars buy where you will be spending them? Kansas wins that, by $1,184. The second question is the one you are actually asking when you ask where to live.
The mechanism is arithmetic rather than opinion. Divide the Alaska take-home by its price level and you get $74,525; do the same in Kansas and you get $75,709. The whole reversal comes from a price index of 102.4 against 90.1, published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis for exactly this purpose.
Where the nominal figure is the right one to use: if you are working in one state and spending in another — a border commute, a remote job you will leave, a posting you will not settle in — then your costs do not follow the state you are paid in, and take-home is what matters. That is a real case and it is why both numbers appear on this page rather than only the one that supports the conclusion.
Where the money actually goes, line by line
Five separate taxes, and here they matter but they do not win: the price level shifts the answer by $9,094 against $4,780 for the biggest tax gap. Both are in play, which makes this one of the pairs where the layers are worth reading closely:
Federal income tax — $13,170 either way. Identical, because it is federal. Any comparison that shows a difference here is wrong.
FICA — $7,650 either way. Also federal, also identical.
State income tax — $0 in Alaska, $4,780 in Kansas. Alaska does not levy one at all, which is the fact that sells the move — and, as the next line shows, not the fact that decides it.
Property tax — $2,866 in Alaska, $6,186 in Kansas on a $400,000 home, at each state's median local rate. Smaller than the income tax gap here, which is not usually the case.
Local income tax — zero on both sides. Alaska has none at any level, state or local — and that holds for all nine states without a state income tax, none of which lets a county or city levy one either. The two go together.
Total: $23,686 in Alaska against $31,786 in Kansas — 23.7% and 31.8% of gross.
And Alaska housing costs 31.7% more
Comparison sites use a single crowd-sourced cost-of-living figure. This is the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity, official and broken into components — and on this pair the components tell a stranger story than the headline, starting with utilities.
Cheaper in Kansas than AlaskaDearer in Kansas than Alaska
Each bar is how far apart Alaska and Kansas are on that component, and which way. Housing almost always runs several times wider than everything else — which is why a single blended index tells you very little.
All items — 102.4 in Alaska, 90.1 in Kansas. A gap of 12.3 points.
Housing — 93.8 against 71.2. A gap of 22.6 points, 1.8× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 106.3 against 94, 12.3 points apart — wide for goods: across all 1,275 state pairs the median goods gap is 2.7 points against 24.9 for housing, so on this pair the shopping basket genuinely differs and not just the rent.
Utilities — 119 against 88.4. 30.6 points, the second widest component after housing on this pair, and large enough to matter to anyone heating or cooling a big house.
Which half of this reaches you depends on whether you buy. Renting, the real difference between Alaska and Kansas is $5,250 a year — property tax comes out of your side entirely, and what is left is the price level. Buying a $400,000 home it is $1,184. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $4,066 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $98,353
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Kansas to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Alaska?
$98,353. That is 1.6% less than you earn now. You could take a pay cut of $1,647 moving to Kansas and be no worse off — which is a very different conversation to have with a recruiter than "Kansas has lower taxes".
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Kansas. If the relationship were a simple multiplier the two would be parallel — they are not, because brackets, the Social Security ceiling and a property tax that does not move with income all bend it.
The obvious shortcut fails here, and by a measurable amount. Scaling your salary by the ratio of price levels — $100,000 × 90.1/102.4 — gives $87,988. The answer is $98,353, so the shortcut is $10,365 too low: brackets, the Social Security ceiling and a property tax that ignores income all bend the line the shortcut assumes is straight.
The figure belongs to the two states and your income. On $40,000 the match in Kansas is $41,302, 3.3% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $241,362, 3.5% below. The relationship bends by 6.7% across that range.
Over 10 years: $11,839
At $1,184 a year, 10 years in Kansas comes to $11,839 — and the county choice inside Kansas is worth $59,712 over the same period. Both are real; only one of them is in the headline.
At $1,184 a year of real difference, 10 years in Kansas instead of Alaska is worth $11,839 in today's purchasing power — before compounding anything you might invest it in.
The line starts below zero because moving costs about $15,000 and lands entirely in year one. It pays for itself inside the first year. That is the figure a per-year comparison hides.
And it is slower to arrive than the annual figure suggests. Reckoning $15,000 for removal, fees and the cost of selling — an assumption this page makes, not a figure from a source — at $1,184 a year it takes 12.7 years to recover — so the annual figure only becomes yours from year 14.
At three horizons: $3,552 over three years, $11,839 over 10, $35,518 over thirty — and the three-year figure does not clear the cost of getting there.
None of those figures contains the one variable that could overturn them: the same job rarely pays the same in Alaska and Kansas. That is what the $98,353 break-even above is for — it prices an offer instead of assuming the offer is identical.
Choosing the county matters more than choosing the state here
This comparison is worth $1,184 a year. Choosing where inside Kansas to live is worth $5,971 a year on the same $400,000 home — 5.0 times as much.
Kansas has 105 counties and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.98% in Nemaha County to 2.47% in Stanton County. Move to the wrong county in the better state and you have given back more than the move gained you, twice over.
Which reframes the question. Rather than "Alaska or Kansas", the decision that carries the money is which county inside Kansas — and the answer is not visible on any comparison that stops at the state line. Set both in the calculator above and every figure on this page recomputes on your actual rates rather than two medians.
The same logic applies to the losing side: Alaska has boroughs and census areas cheaper than the median used here too, and for a reader who is staying put, moving county at home may be the better version of this decision.
You could take a $1,647 pay cut to move to Kansas and be no worse off
That is the version of this comparison worth taking into a negotiation, and it is not a figure any tax calculator produces.
Matching your $100,000 standard of living in Alaska takes $98,353 in Kansas — 1.6% less than you earn now. So an offer of $98,353 is not a downgrade, and an offer above it is a raise however it looks on paper.
The reverse framing is the one recruiters use, and it is worth being able to answer: a company in Alaska offering to match your current salary is offering you less than the Kansas job at $98,353. On 10 years the difference is $11,839.
Where every number here comes from
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/
The cost of living index is the part worth checking, because it is where comparison sites usually reach for something crowd-sourced. The Regional Price Parities are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, cover every state and metro area, and are published with a methodology document. The figures here are the 2024 release and are not extrapolated forward.
And what this page does 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.
Where to go next
Questions
- Is it cheaper to live in Alaska or Kansas?
- Kansas, by $1,184 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $8,100; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Alaska indexes at 102.4 and Kansas at 90.1 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Kansas to match $100,000 in Alaska?
- $98,353 — 1.6% less than you earn now, so a pay cut of up to $1,647 still leaves you level. That accounts for federal tax, FICA, state tax, property tax and the price level in each state.
- What are the taxes in Alaska vs Kansas?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $0 in Alaska against $4,780 in Kansas, and property tax of $2,866 against $6,186 on a $400,000 home at median county rates. Federal tax and FICA are identical in both — $13,170 and $7,650 — so any comparison showing a difference there is wrong.
- Does Kansas really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Kansas runs from 0.98% in Nemaha County to 2.47% in Stanton County — 2.5 times, or $5,971 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 1.55%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $11,839 in today's purchasing power, at $1,184 a year. That excludes moving and housing transaction costs, which land in year one and can outweigh everything else on a short stay.
- Where does your cost of living data come from?
- The Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities for 2024, an official index covering every state and metro area with a published methodology. Not a crowd-sourced database — and it comes broken into housing, goods, utilities and services, which matters because housing moves several times more than anything else.