Arkansas vs Maryland
A tax calculator says the difference is $5,330 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Arkansas is $19,630 ahead — $196,298 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 Maryland?
in what the money buys · $196,298 over 10 years
You need 33.5% 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 Maryland 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 Maryland
States that sit near Maryland on prices compared against Arkansas, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Arkansas vs Massachusetts— Arkansas by $18,303
- Arkansas vs New Hampshire— Arkansas by $16,038
- Arkansas vs Connecticut— Arkansas by $18,733
- Maryland vs Mississippi— Mississippi by $19,089
- Iowa vs Maryland— Iowa by $15,699
- Maryland vs Oklahoma— Oklahoma by $18,012
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
- Talbot County, Maryland— 0.66%, the cheapest
- Baltimore city, Maryland— 1.48%, the dearest
Similar in price to Arkansas
States that sit next to Arkansas on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Iowa— 87.8 on prices
- Oklahoma— 87.8 on prices
- Mississippi— 87 on prices
- Every Arkansas comparison— all 50
- Every Maryland comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Arkansas or Maryland is a housing decision: Maryland housing runs 108.1% dearer
The tax difference between Arkansas and Maryland is real but it is not what decides this one. On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, take-home moves by $5,330 a year. Housing moves by far more: the housing component of the official price index is 58.2 in Arkansas against 121.1 in Maryland, a gap of 62.9 points against just 18.1 on the index as a whole.
Which means a single blended cost-of-living number would hide the only variable that matters here. Put the housing gap into the arithmetic and Arkansas comes out $19,630 a year ahead in what the money buys — $196,298 over 10 years. If you rent a small flat, most of that advantage never reaches you; if you buy a family house, it is understated.
Where the two sit nationally: Maryland is the 8th 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 121.1.
Grey columns are what a year of Arkansas and a year of Maryland 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
Before the layers, the conclusion they lead to: on this pair the tax code is a side issue. The price level moves the answer 4.5 times more than the largest single tax difference between Arkansas and Maryland. The five layers still deserve walking, because they are what people arrive believing decides it:
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, $4,384 in Maryland. A difference of $697.
Property tax — $2,127 in Arkansas, $3,772 in Maryland 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 — $0 in Arkansas, $2,989 in Maryland. Maryland levies it in every one of its counties, so this is not optional and not a rounding error — it is the layer nearly every published comparison omits, and here it is worth $2,989 on its own. The figure above uses the median county; pick yours in the calculator and it moves.
Total: $26,634 in Arkansas against $31,965 in Maryland — 26.6% and 32.0% of gross.
And Maryland housing costs 108.1% more
The cost of living gap between Arkansas and Maryland is almost entirely a housing gap, and that is only visible because the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity publishes its components separately rather than as one blended number. 100 is the national average.
Cheaper in Maryland than ArkansasDearer in Maryland than Arkansas
Each bar is how far apart Arkansas and Maryland 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, 105 in Maryland. A gap of 18.1 points.
Housing — 58.2 against 121.1. A gap of 62.9 points, 3.5× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 93.6 against 102.5, 8.9 points apart — 7.1 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 110.9. 36.2 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 Arkansas and Maryland is $18,485 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 $19,630. So buying widens the gap by $1,145: the more house you own, the more this comparison is worth to you.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $133,522
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Maryland to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Arkansas?
$133,522. That is 33.5% more than you earn now. Anything less than $133,522 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 Maryland. 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 × 105/86.9 — gives $120,829. The answer is $133,522, so the shortcut is $12,693 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 Maryland is $52,880, 32.2% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $338,141, 35.3% above. The relationship bends by 3.1% across that range.
"Arkansas" and "Maryland" 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 Maryland — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Maryland has 24 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.66% in Talbot County to 1.48% in Baltimore city — 2.2 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $3,268 a year, without leaving the state.
24 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 Maryland" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Maryland against the dearest county in Arkansas swings the property tax line by $496 a year; the reverse choice swings it $4,489 the other way. Against a headline difference of $19,630, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Local income tax behaves the same way and is already in the figures above: $0 in Arkansas against $2,989 in Maryland at the median local rate. Choose your county and that line moves too — it is the layer with the widest spread inside a single state.
Over 10 years: $196,298
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $19,630 a year of real difference, 10 years in Arkansas instead of Maryland is worth $196,298 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 1 for the move to pay for itself. That is the figure a per-year comparison hides.
And it starts almost immediately. Reckon $15,000 for removal, fees and the cost of selling — an assumption, not a sourced figure — and 9 months of the $19,630 annual gain covers it, so from year two everything above is yours.
At three horizons: $58,889 over three years, $196,298 over 10, $588,894 over thirty, all of it net of the move after the first year.
None of those figures contains the one variable that could overturn them: the same job rarely pays the same in Arkansas and Maryland. That is what the $133,522 break-even above is for — it prices an offer instead of assuming the offer is identical.
The layer almost every comparison leaves out: $2,989 of local income tax
Eleven states let counties, cities or school districts levy their own income tax on top of the state one. Maryland is one of them, and it changes this comparison by $2,989 a year on $100,000.
$0 in Arkansas against $2,989 in Maryland, at the median local rate. For scale, the state income tax difference between these two is $697 — so this "minor" layer is larger than the state difference everybody quotes.
It gets omitted because it is genuinely hard to assemble: the rates live in state comptroller files, municipal registers and school district schedules rather than in one table. We loaded them — Maryland's 24 counties, Indiana's 92, Ohio's municipalities and school districts, Pennsylvania's earned income taxes, Michigan's 24 cities, New York City's own brackets — which is why the figure above is a figure and not a caveat.
It is also the layer most sensitive to where exactly you land. Choose your county in the calculator and this line moves more than any other.
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 Maryland?
- Arkansas, by $19,630 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $5,330; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Arkansas indexes at 86.9 and Maryland at 105 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Maryland to match $100,000 in Arkansas?
- $133,522 — 33.5% 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 Maryland?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $3,687 in Arkansas against $4,384 in Maryland, and property tax of $2,127 against $3,772 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 Maryland really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Maryland runs from 0.66% in Talbot County to 1.48% in Baltimore city — 2.2 times, or $3,268 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 0.94%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $196,298 in today's purchasing power, at $19,630 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.