Idaho vs Iowa
A tax calculator says the difference is $2,045 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Iowa is $4,349 ahead — $43,491 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 · $43,491 over 10 years
A pay cut of up to $5,738 (5.7%) 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: Idaho 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 Idaho or Iowa
States that sit near Iowa on prices compared against Idaho, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Idaho vs Oklahoma— Oklahoma by $6,662
- Idaho vs Louisiana— Louisiana by $8,742
- Idaho vs Mississippi— Mississippi by $7,739
- Iowa vs Michigan— Iowa by $7,056
- Georgia vs Iowa— Iowa by $6,530
- Iowa vs Montana— Iowa by $4,325
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.
- Clark County, Idaho— 0.29%, the cheapest
- Nez Perce County, Idaho— 0.87%, the dearest
- Lyon County, Iowa— 0.92%, the cheapest
- Montgomery County, Iowa— 1.79%, the dearest
Similar in price to Idaho
States that sit next to Idaho on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Maine— 97 on prices
- Georgia— 96.3 on prices
- Michigan— 96.2 on prices
- Montana— 94.6 on prices
- Every Idaho comparison— all 50
- Every Iowa comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
A tax calculator says Idaho. The right answer is Iowa, by $4,349 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, Idaho leaves you $2,045 more in take-home. That figure is correct. It is also the wrong basis for the decision.
Because Idaho is the more expensive place to spend it. On the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index Idaho is 95.5 and Iowa is 87.8, national average 100. Deflate each take-home by where it gets spent and the ranking inverts: $76,145 in Idaho against $80,495 in Iowa. Iowa wins by $4,349 a year — the opposite state to the one the tax figure names, and $43,491 over 10 years.
Where the two sit nationally: Idaho is the 29th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Iowa is 48th. Housing, the component that moves most, is 90 against 65.3.
Grey columns are what a year of Idaho 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.
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? Idaho wins that, by $2,045. Purchasing power answers: how much can those dollars buy where you will be spending them? Iowa wins that, by $4,349. 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 Idaho take-home by its price level and you get $76,145; do the same in Iowa and you get $80,495. The whole reversal comes from a price index of 95.5 against 87.8, 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 $6,490 against $3,343 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 — $4,447 in Idaho, $3,148 in Iowa. A difference of $1,299.
Property tax — $2,014 in Idaho, $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 Idaho and Iowa keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $27,281 in Idaho against $29,326 in Iowa — 27.3% and 29.3% of gross.
And Idaho housing costs 37.8% more
The cost of living gap between Idaho and Iowa 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 Iowa than IdahoDearer in Iowa than Idaho
Each bar is how far apart Idaho 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 — 95.5 in Idaho, 87.8 in Iowa. A gap of 7.7 points.
Housing — 90 against 65.3. A gap of 24.7 points, 3.2× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 96.3 against 93.7, 2.6 points apart — 9.5 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 — 70.4 against 83.3. 12.9 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 Idaho and Iowa is $8,342 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 $4,349. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $3,993 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $94,262
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 Idaho?
$94,262. That is 5.7% less than you earn now. You could take a pay cut of $5,738 moving to Iowa and be no worse off — which is a very different conversation to have with a recruiter than "Iowa has lower taxes".
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 × 87.8/95.5 — gives $91,937. The answer is $94,262, so the shortcut is $2,325 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 $40,578, 1.4% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $227,667, 8.9% below. The relationship bends by 10.4% across that range.
"Idaho" and "Iowa" are not places you can compare
Every figure above uses each state's median local property tax rate — its counties in Idaho, 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.
44 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 3.0 times from end to end, which is why a state average is not a number you can plan with.
Idaho has 44 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.29% in Clark County to 0.87% in Nez Perce County — 3.0 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $2,306 a year, without leaving the state.
So the honest version of this question is not "Idaho or Iowa" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Iowa against the dearest county in Idaho swings the property tax line by $206 a year; the reverse choice swings it $5,996 the other way. Against a headline difference of $4,349, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither Idaho 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 Idaho and Iowa are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $43,491
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $4,349 a year of real difference, 10 years in Iowa instead of Idaho is worth $43,491 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 $4,349 a year it takes 3.4 years to earn back, so a stay shorter than that loses money on a move the annual figure calls a win.
At three horizons: $13,047 over three years, $43,491 over 10, $130,473 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 Idaho and Iowa. That is what the $94,262 break-even above is for — it prices an offer instead of assuming the offer is identical.
You could take a $5,738 pay cut to move to Iowa 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 Idaho takes $94,262 in Iowa — 5.7% less than you earn now. So an offer of $94,262 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 Idaho offering to match your current salary is offering you less than the Iowa job at $94,262. On 10 years the difference is $43,491.
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 Idaho or Iowa?
- Iowa, by $4,349 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $2,045; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Idaho indexes at 95.5 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 Idaho?
- $94,262 — 5.7% less than you earn now, so a pay cut of up to $5,738 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 Idaho vs Iowa?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $4,447 in Idaho against $3,148 in Iowa, and property tax of $2,014 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?
- $43,491 in today's purchasing power, at $4,349 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.