Colorado vs Maine
A tax calculator says the difference is $4,903 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Colorado is $544 ahead — $5,444 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 Maine?
in what the money buys · $5,444 over 10 years
You need 0.8% 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: Colorado and Maine 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 Colorado or Maine
States that sit near Maine on prices compared against Colorado, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Colorado vs Texas— Texas by $4,670
- Colorado vs Pennsylvania— Pennsylvania by $953
- Colorado vs Georgia— Georgia by $2,242
- Florida vs Maine— Florida by $2,548
- Maine vs Oregon— Maine by $5,201
- Connecticut vs Maine— Maine by $5,485
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.
- Jackson County, Colorado— 0.21%, the cheapest
- Broomfield County, Colorado— 0.62%, the dearest
- Hancock County, Maine— 0.88%, the cheapest
- Penobscot County, Maine— 1.26%, the dearest
Similar in price to Colorado
States that sit next to Colorado on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Connecticut— 103.6 on prices
- Florida— 103.4 on prices
- Oregon— 103.4 on prices
- Alaska— 102.4 on prices
- Every Colorado comparison— all 50
- Every Maine comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Colorado or Maine is a housing decision: Colorado housing runs 61.5% dearer
The tax difference between Colorado and Maine is real but it is not what decides this one. On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, take-home moves by $4,903 a year. Housing moves by far more: the housing component of the official price index is 127.4 in Colorado against 78.9 in Maine, a gap of 48.5 points against just 6.1 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 Colorado comes out $544 a year ahead in what the money buys — $5,444 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: Colorado is the 13th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Maine is 26th. Housing, the component that moves most, is 127.4 against 78.9.
Grey columns are what a year of Colorado and a year of Maine 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 here they matter but they do not win: the price level shifts the answer by $4,211 against $2,940 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 — $3,692 in Colorado, $5,654 in Maine. A difference of $1,963.
Property tax — $1,543 in Colorado, $4,484 in Maine 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 Colorado and Maine keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $26,055 in Colorado against $30,958 in Maine — 26.1% and 31.0% of gross.
And Colorado housing costs 61.5% more
The cost of living gap between Colorado and Maine 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 Maine than ColoradoDearer in Maine than Colorado
Each bar is how far apart Colorado and Maine 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 — 103.1 in Colorado, 97 in Maine. A gap of 6.1 points.
Housing — 127.4 against 78.9. A gap of 48.5 points, 8.0× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 98.7 against 97.2, 1.5 points apart — 32.3 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 — 85 against 135.2. 50.2 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 Colorado and Maine is $2,581 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 $544. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $2,037 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $100,836
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Maine to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Colorado?
$100,836. That is 0.8% more than you earn now. Anything less than $100,836 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 Maine. 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 × 97/103.1 — gives $94,083. The answer is $100,836, so the shortcut is $6,753 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 Maine is $42,079, 5.2% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $248,103, 0.8% below. The relationship bends by 6.0% across that range.
Over 10 years: $5,444
At $544 a year, 10 years in Colorado comes to $5,444 — and the county choice inside Colorado is worth $16,416 over the same period. Both are real; only one of them is in the headline.
At $544 a year of real difference, 10 years in Colorado instead of Maine is worth $5,444 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 $544 a year it takes 27.6 years to recover — so the annual figure only becomes yours from year 29.
At three horizons: $1,633 over three years, $5,444 over 10, $16,333 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 Colorado and Maine. That is what the $100,836 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 $544 a year. Choosing where inside Colorado to live is worth $1,642 a year on the same $400,000 home — 3.0 times as much.
Colorado has 64 counties and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.21% in Jackson County to 0.62% in Broomfield 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 "Colorado or Maine", the decision that carries the money is which county inside Colorado — 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: Maine has counties 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.
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 Colorado or Maine?
- Colorado, by $544 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $4,903; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Colorado indexes at 103.1 and Maine at 97 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Maine to match $100,000 in Colorado?
- $100,836 — 0.8% more. That accounts for federal tax, FICA, state tax, property tax and the price level in each state.
- What are the taxes in Colorado vs Maine?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $3,692 in Colorado against $5,654 in Maine, and property tax of $1,543 against $4,484 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 Maine really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Maine runs from 0.88% in Hancock County to 1.26% in Penobscot County — 1.4 times, or $1,513 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 1.12%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $5,444 in today's purchasing power, at $544 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.