New York vs Wyoming
A tax calculator says the difference is $11,340 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Wyoming is $22,198 ahead — $221,985 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 Wyoming?
in what the money buys · $221,985 over 10 years
A pay cut of up to $29,251 (29.3%) 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: New York and Wyoming 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 New York or Wyoming
States that sit near Wyoming on prices compared against New York, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- New York vs Ohio— Ohio by $17,817
- New Mexico vs New York— New Mexico by $18,830
- Indiana vs New York— Indiana by $18,041
- New Jersey vs Wyoming— Wyoming by $22,147
- Washington vs Wyoming— Wyoming by $11,916
- District of Columbia vs Wyoming— Wyoming by $18,062
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.
- Kings County, New York— 0.69%, the cheapest
- Orleans County, New York— 3.00%, the dearest
- Niobrara County, Wyoming— 0.38%, the cheapest
- Washakie County, Wyoming— 0.70%, the dearest
Similar in price to New York
States that sit next to New York on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Hawaii— 110 on prices
- District of Columbia— 109.9 on prices
- New Jersey— 108.8 on prices
- Washington— 107 on prices
- Every New York comparison— all 50
- Every Wyoming comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Wyoming has no income tax, and against New York that is worth only $11,340 — here is where it goes
Wyoming does not levy a state income tax. That single fact drives most of the traffic between these two states, and taken alone it implies a saving of $4,860 a year on $100,000 — what New York would have taken.
The actual change in take-home is $11,340, because Wyoming charges more property tax: $2,261 against $8,741 on a $400,000 home. States without an income tax raise the money somewhere, and the somewhere is usually your house. Then prices move it again — 107.9 against 92.7 on the official index — leaving a real difference of $22,198 a year in favour of Wyoming, 2.0× the nominal figure.
Where the two sit nationally: New York is the 5th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Wyoming is 36th. Housing, the component that moves most, is 122.2 against 71.1.
Grey columns are what a year of New York and a year of Wyoming 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 $11,689 against $6,480 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 — $4,860 in New York, $0 in Wyoming. Wyoming does not levy one at all, which is the fact that sells the move — and, as the next line shows, not the fact that decides it.
Property tax — $8,741 in New York, $2,261 in Wyoming 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. Wyoming has none at any level, state or local — and that holds for all nine states without a state income tax, none of which lets a county or city levy one either. The two go together.
Total: $34,421 in New York against $23,081 in Wyoming — 34.4% and 23.1% of gross.
And New York housing costs 71.9% more
The cost of living gap between New York and Wyoming 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 Wyoming than New YorkDearer in Wyoming than New York
Each bar is how far apart New York and Wyoming 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 — 107.9 in New York, 92.7 in Wyoming. A gap of 15.2 points.
Housing — 122.2 against 71.1. A gap of 51.1 points, 3.4× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 107.3 against 95.4, 11.9 points apart — 4.3 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 — 134.4 against 78.4. 56.0 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 New York and Wyoming is $16,536 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 $22,198. So buying widens the gap by $5,662: the more house you own, the more this comparison is worth to you.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $70,749
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Wyoming to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in New York?
$70,749. That is 29.3% less than you earn now. You could take a pay cut of $29,251 moving to Wyoming and be no worse off — which is a very different conversation to have with a recruiter than "Wyoming has lower taxes".
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Wyoming. 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 × 92.7/107.9 — gives $85,913. The answer is $70,749, so the shortcut is $15,164 too high: 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 Wyoming is $25,846, 35.4% below what you earn; on $250,000 it is $188,204, 24.7% below. The relationship bends by 10.7% across that range.
"New York" and "Wyoming" are not places you can compare
Every figure above uses each state's median local property tax rate — its counties in New York, its counties in Wyoming — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Wyoming has 23 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.38% in Niobrara County to 0.7% in Washakie County — 1.9 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $1,296 a year, without leaving the state.
62 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 4.4 times from end to end, which is why a state average is not a number you can plan with.
New York has 62 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.69% in Kings County to 3.0% in Orleans County — 4.4 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $9,232 a year, without leaving the state.
So the honest version of this question is not "New York or Wyoming" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Wyoming against the dearest county in New York swings the property tax line by $10,478 a year; the reverse choice swings it $50 the other way. Against a headline difference of $22,198, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither New York nor Wyoming 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 New York and Wyoming are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $221,985
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $22,198 a year of real difference, 10 years in Wyoming instead of New York is worth $221,985 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 8 months of the $22,198 annual gain covers it, so from year two everything above is yours.
At three horizons: $66,595 over three years, $221,985 over 10, $665,955 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 New York and Wyoming. That is what the $70,749 break-even above is for — it prices an offer instead of assuming the offer is identical.
You could take a $29,251 pay cut to move to Wyoming 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 New York takes $70,749 in Wyoming — 29.3% less than you earn now. So an offer of $70,749 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 New York offering to match your current salary is offering you less than the Wyoming job at $70,749. On 10 years the difference is $221,985.
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 New York or Wyoming?
- Wyoming, by $22,198 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $11,340; the rest comes from the cost of living, where New York indexes at 107.9 and Wyoming at 92.7 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Wyoming to match $100,000 in New York?
- $70,749 — 29.3% less than you earn now, so a pay cut of up to $29,251 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 New York vs Wyoming?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $4,860 in New York against $0 in Wyoming, and property tax of $8,741 against $2,261 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 Wyoming really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Wyoming runs from 0.38% in Niobrara County to 0.7% in Washakie County — 1.9 times, or $1,296 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 0.57%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $221,985 in today's purchasing power, at $22,198 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.