Iowa vs Michigan
A tax calculator says the difference is $26 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Iowa is $7,056 ahead — $70,559 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 Michigan?
in what the money buys · $70,559 over 10 years
You need 10.3% 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 Michigan 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 Michigan
States that sit near Michigan on prices compared against Iowa, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Georgia vs Iowa— Iowa by $6,530
- Idaho vs Iowa— Iowa by $4,349
- Iowa vs Maine— Iowa by $9,317
- Michigan vs Oklahoma— Oklahoma by $9,369
- Louisiana vs Michigan— Louisiana by $11,449
- Michigan vs Mississippi— Mississippi by $10,446
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
- Leelanau County, Michigan— 0.70%, the cheapest
- Ingham County, Michigan— 1.86%, 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 Michigan comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Iowa leaves you $7,056 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 Michigan is $26 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 Michigan as the same thing.
They are not. On the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index Iowa is 87.8 and Michigan is 96.2, 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 $73,439 in Michigan — a real difference of $7,056 a year, 268.8× the nominal one, and $70,559 over the 10 years most people stay.
Where the two sit nationally: Michigan is the 28th 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 82.3.
Grey columns are what a year of Iowa and a year of Michigan 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 8.3 times more than the largest single tax difference between Iowa and Michigan. 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 — $3,148 in Iowa, $3,999 in Michigan. A difference of $851.
Property tax — $5,358 in Iowa, $4,533 in Michigan 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 Michigan keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $29,326 in Iowa against $29,352 in Michigan — 29.3% and 29.4% of gross.
And Michigan housing costs 26.0% more
The cost of living figure on most comparison sites is one number from a crowd-sourced database. This is the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity — an official index published for every state, where 100 is the national average — and it comes split into components, which is the half that decides moves.
Cheaper in Michigan than IowaDearer in Michigan than Iowa
Each bar is how far apart Iowa and Michigan 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, 96.2 in Michigan. A gap of 8.4 points.
Housing — 65.3 against 82.3. A gap of 17.0 points, 2.0× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 93.7 against 96, 2.3 points apart — 7.4 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 100.2. 16.9 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 Iowa and Michigan is $8,446 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 $7,056. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $1,390 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $110,269
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Michigan to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Iowa?
$110,269. That is 10.3% more than you earn now. Anything less than $110,269 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 Michigan. 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 × 96.2/87.8 — gives $109,567. The answer is $110,269, so the shortcut is $702 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 Michigan is $43,212, 8.0% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $277,736, 11.1% above. The relationship bends by 3.1% across that range.
"Iowa" and "Michigan" 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 Michigan — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Michigan has 83 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.7% in Leelanau County to 1.86% in Ingham County — 2.7 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $4,634 a year, without leaving the state.
83 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 2.7 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 Michigan" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Michigan against the dearest county in Iowa swings the property tax line by $4,355 a year; the reverse choice swings it $3,762 the other way. Against a headline difference of $7,056, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither Iowa nor Michigan 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 Michigan are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $70,559
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $7,056 a year of real difference, 10 years in Iowa instead of Michigan is worth $70,559 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 3 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 $7,056 a year it takes 2.1 years to earn back, so a stay shorter than that loses money on a move the annual figure calls a win.
At three horizons: $21,168 over three years, $70,559 over 10, $211,677 over thirty.
None of those figures contains the one variable that could overturn them: the same job rarely pays the same in Iowa and Michigan. That is what the $110,269 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 Michigan?
- Iowa, by $7,056 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $26; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Iowa indexes at 87.8 and Michigan at 96.2 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Michigan to match $100,000 in Iowa?
- $110,269 — 10.3% 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 Michigan?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $3,148 in Iowa against $3,999 in Michigan, and property tax of $5,358 against $4,533 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 Michigan really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Michigan runs from 0.7% in Leelanau County to 1.86% in Ingham County — 2.7 times, or $4,634 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 1.13%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $70,559 in today's purchasing power, at $7,056 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.