Arkansas vs Iowa
A tax calculator says the difference is $2,691 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Arkansas is $3,931 ahead — $39,307 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 Iowa?
in what the money buys · $39,307 over 10 years
You need 5.2% more for the move to break even.
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: Arkansas and Iowa 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 Arkansas or Iowa
States that sit near Iowa on prices compared against Arkansas, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Arkansas vs Oklahoma— Arkansas by $1,618
- Arkansas vs Louisiana— Louisiana by $462
- Arkansas vs Mississippi— Arkansas by $541
- Iowa vs Mississippi— Mississippi by $3,390
- Iowa vs Oklahoma— Oklahoma by $2,313
- Iowa vs Louisiana— Louisiana by $4,393
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.
- Stone County, Arkansas— 0.35%, the cheapest
- Pulaski County, Arkansas— 0.78%, the dearest
- Lyon County, Iowa— 0.92%, the cheapest
- Montgomery County, Iowa— 1.79%, the dearest
Similar in price to Arkansas
States that sit next to Arkansas on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Oklahoma— 87.8 on prices
- Mississippi— 87 on prices
- Every Arkansas comparison— all 50
- Every Iowa comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Arkansas and Iowa cost almost exactly the same, so this one really is about tax
Most comparisons on this site end up decided by the price level rather than the tax code. This pair is the exception: Arkansas indexes at 86.9 and Iowa at 87.8 on the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index — 0.9 points apart, which is close enough that the deflator barely changes anything.
So the tax difference survives into the answer almost intact. Take-home differs by $2,691 and purchasing power by $3,931 — Arkansas ahead either way, which is unusual enough to be worth stating. When someone tells you tax rates decide where you should live, this is the shape of pair they are imagining — 281 of the 1,275, so a little over one in five.
Where the two sit nationally: Iowa is the 48th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Arkansas is 51st. Housing, the component that moves most, is 58.2 against 65.3.
Grey columns are what a year of Arkansas and a year of Iowa 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.
Where the money actually goes, line by line
Five separate taxes, and on this pair property tax is the biggest single difference — $3,230 against $539 for the income tax everybody quotes:
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 — $3,687 in Arkansas, $3,148 in Iowa. A difference of $539.
Property tax — $2,127 in Arkansas, $5,358 in Iowa on a $400,000 home, at each state's median local rate. This is bigger than the income tax difference, and it runs the other way — which is the whole reason the headline number disappoints.
Local income tax — zero on both sides. Both Arkansas and Iowa keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $26,634 in Arkansas against $29,326 in Iowa — 26.6% and 29.3% of gross.
And Iowa housing costs 12.2% more
These two states cost almost the same to live in, which is why the tax difference survives into the answer. The index is the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity — official, published per state, 100 is the national average — and it is worth looking at the components even when the headline barely moves, because they can disagree with it.
Cheaper in Iowa than ArkansasDearer in Iowa than Arkansas
Each bar is how far apart Arkansas and Iowa 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 — 86.9 in Arkansas, 87.8 in Iowa. A gap of 0.9 points.
Housing — 58.2 against 65.3. A gap of 7.1 points, 7.9× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 93.6 against 93.7, 0.1 points apart — 71.0 times narrower than the housing gap — and typical: across all 1,275 pairs the median is 2.7 points for goods against 24.9 for housing. Blended into one figure, what you are reading is mostly housing wearing a general label.
Utilities — 74.7 against 83.3. 8.6 points apart, close enough not to change a decision.
Which half of this reaches you depends on whether you buy. Renting, the real difference between Arkansas and Iowa is $277 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 $3,931. So buying widens the gap by $3,654: the more house you own, the more this comparison is worth to you.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $105,186
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Iowa to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Arkansas?
$105,186. That is 5.2% more than you earn now. Anything less than $105,186 and the move costs you money however it is presented.
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Iowa. 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 × 87.8/86.9 — gives $101,036. The answer is $105,186, so the shortcut is $4,150 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 Iowa is $44,011, 10.0% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $256,981, 2.8% above. The relationship bends by 7.2% across that range.
"Arkansas" and "Iowa" are not places you can compare
Every figure above uses each state's median local property tax rate — its counties in Arkansas, its counties in Iowa — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Iowa has 99 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.92% in Lyon County to 1.79% in Montgomery County — 1.9 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $3,484 a year, without leaving the state.
75 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 2.2 times from end to end, which is why a state average is not a number you can plan with.
Arkansas has 75 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.35% in Stone County to 0.78% in Pulaski County — 2.2 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $1,717 a year, without leaving the state.
So the honest version of this question is not "Arkansas or Iowa" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Iowa against the dearest county in Arkansas swings the property tax line by $549 a year; the reverse choice swings it $5,749 the other way. Against a headline difference of $3,931, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither Arkansas nor Iowa lets its counties levy their own income tax, so that layer is genuinely zero here rather than unmodelled — one of the 1,225 pairs out of 1,275 where it does not apply. It is the reason Arkansas and Iowa are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $39,307
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $3,931 a year of real difference, 10 years in Arkansas instead of Iowa is worth $39,307 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 takes until year 4 for the move to pay for itself. That is the figure a per-year comparison hides.
The first slice of it is not yours, though. Reckoning $15,000 for removal, fees and selling costs — this page's assumption, not a sourced figure — at $3,931 a year it takes 3.8 years to earn back, so a stay shorter than that loses money on a move the annual figure calls a win.
At three horizons: $11,792 over three years, $39,307 over 10, $117,921 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 Arkansas and Iowa. That is what the $105,186 break-even above is for — it prices an offer instead of assuming the offer is identical.
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 Arkansas or Iowa?
- Arkansas, by $3,931 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $2,691; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Arkansas indexes at 86.9 and Iowa at 87.8 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Iowa to match $100,000 in Arkansas?
- $105,186 — 5.2% more. That accounts for federal tax, FICA, state tax, property tax and the price level in each state.
- What are the taxes in Arkansas vs Iowa?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $3,687 in Arkansas against $3,148 in Iowa, and property tax of $2,127 against $5,358 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 Iowa really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Iowa runs from 0.92% in Lyon County to 1.79% in Montgomery County — 1.9 times, or $3,484 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 1.34%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $39,307 in today's purchasing power, at $3,931 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.