Iowa vs Maine
A tax calculator says the difference is $1,632 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Iowa is $9,317 ahead — $93,172 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 · $93,172 over 10 years
You need 14.3% 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: Iowa 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 Iowa or Maine
States that sit near Maine on prices compared against Iowa, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Iowa vs Texas— Iowa by $4,103
- Iowa vs Pennsylvania— Iowa by $7,820
- Georgia vs Iowa— Iowa by $6,530
- Maine vs Oklahoma— Oklahoma by $11,630
- Louisiana vs Maine— Louisiana by $13,710
- Maine vs Mississippi— Mississippi by $12,707
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.
- Lyon County, Iowa— 0.92%, the cheapest
- Montgomery County, Iowa— 1.79%, the dearest
- Hancock County, Maine— 0.88%, the cheapest
- Penobscot County, Maine— 1.26%, the dearest
Similar in price to Iowa
States that sit next to Iowa on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Alabama— 88.8 on prices
- South Dakota— 88.6 on prices
- Louisiana— 88.2 on prices
- Oklahoma— 87.8 on prices
- Every Iowa comparison— all 50
- Every Maine comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Iowa leaves you $9,317 a year better off — not the number you were expecting
On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, the take-home difference between Iowa and Maine is $1,632 a year. That is what a tax calculator gives you, and it is a nominal figure: it treats a dollar in Iowa and a dollar in Maine as the same thing.
They are not. On the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index Iowa is 87.8 and Maine is 97, where 100 is the national average. Deflate each take-home by where it gets spent and what the money actually buys is $80,495 in Iowa against $71,177 in Maine — a real difference of $9,317 a year, 5.7× the nominal one, and $93,172 over the 10 years most people stay.
Where the two sit nationally: Maine is the 26th 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 65.3 against 78.9.
Grey columns are what a year of Iowa 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 $7,458 against $2,506 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 — $3,148 in Iowa, $5,654 in Maine. A difference of $2,506.
Property tax — $5,358 in Iowa, $4,484 in Maine 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. Both Iowa and Maine keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $29,326 in Iowa against $30,958 in Maine — 29.3% and 31.0% of gross.
And Maine housing costs 20.8% 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 Maine than IowaDearer in Maine than Iowa
Each bar is how far apart Iowa 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 — 87.8 in Iowa, 97 in Maine. A gap of 9.2 points.
Housing — 65.3 against 78.9. A gap of 13.6 points, 1.5× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 93.7 against 97.2, 3.5 points apart — 3.9 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 — 83.3 against 135.2. 51.9 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 Iowa and Maine is $10,797 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 $9,317. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $1,480 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $114,300
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 Iowa?
$114,300. That is 14.3% more than you earn now. Anything less than $114,300 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 × 97/87.8 — gives $110,478. The answer is $114,300, so the shortcut is $3,822 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 $43,696, 9.2% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $292,691, 17.1% above. The relationship bends by 7.8% across that range.
"Iowa" and "Maine" are not places you can compare
Every figure above uses each state's median local property tax rate — its counties in Iowa, its counties in Maine — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Maine has 16 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.88% in Hancock County to 1.26% in Penobscot County — 1.4 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $1,513 a year, without leaving the state.
99 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 1.9 times from end to end, which is why a state average is not a number you can plan with.
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.
So the honest version of this question is not "Iowa or Maine" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Maine against the dearest county in Iowa swings the property tax line by $3,650 a year; the reverse choice swings it $1,346 the other way. Against a headline difference of $9,317, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither Iowa nor Maine 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 Iowa and Maine are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $93,172
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $9,317 a year of real difference, 10 years in Iowa instead of Maine is worth $93,172 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 2 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 $9,317 a year it takes 1.6 years to earn back, so a stay shorter than that loses money on a move the annual figure calls a win.
At three horizons: $27,951 over three years, $93,172 over 10, $279,515 over thirty.
None of those figures contains the one variable that could overturn them: the same job rarely pays the same in Iowa and Maine. That is what the $114,300 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 Iowa or Maine?
- Iowa, by $9,317 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $1,632; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Iowa indexes at 87.8 and Maine at 97 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Maine to match $100,000 in Iowa?
- $114,300 — 14.3% more. That accounts for federal tax, FICA, state tax, property tax and the price level in each state.
- What are the taxes in Iowa vs Maine?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $3,148 in Iowa against $5,654 in Maine, and property tax of $5,358 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?
- $93,172 in today's purchasing power, at $9,317 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.