North Dakota vs Tennessee
On $100,000 these two come out level once cost of living is counted — which the tax rates alone would never tell you.
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 Tennessee?
in what the money buys · $395 over 10 years
You need 0.1% 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: North Dakota and Tennessee 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 North Dakota or Tennessee
States that sit near Tennessee on prices compared against North Dakota, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- New Mexico vs North Dakota— North Dakota by $4,401
- North Dakota vs Wyoming— North Dakota by $1,032
- North Dakota vs Ohio— North Dakota by $5,414
- Alabama vs Tennessee— Tennessee by $1,621
- South Dakota vs Tennessee— South Dakota by $535
- Tennessee vs West Virginia— Tennessee by $2,007
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.
- Billings County, North Dakota— 0.37%, the cheapest
- Foster County, North Dakota— 1.29%, the dearest
- Cumberland County, Tennessee— 0.31%, the cheapest
- Shelby County, Tennessee— 1.03%, the dearest
Similar in price to North Dakota
States that sit next to North Dakota on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Kansas— 90.1 on prices
- Nebraska— 90.1 on prices
- West Virginia— 89.5 on prices
- Alabama— 88.8 on prices
- Every North Dakota comparison— all 50
- Every Tennessee comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
On $100,000, North Dakota and Tennessee come out level — and the rates are nothing like level
Two states that finish in a dead heat on a measure built out of five taxes and a price index is not a boring result; it means several large differences are cancelling. On $100,000 with a $400,000 home the purchasing power is $84,009 in North Dakota and $83,969 in Tennessee — $39 apart, which on this salary is noise.
The parts are not level at all. State income tax is $691 against $0, property tax $3,722 against $2,012, and the price index 89 against 91.9. Any one of those quoted alone would look like a decisive argument for one side. Together they come to nothing, which means for this pair the money is genuinely not the deciding factor and you can choose on everything else.
Where the two sit nationally: Tennessee is the 38th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and North Dakota is 44th. Housing, the component that moves most, is 71.4 against 79.1.
Grey columns are what a year of North Dakota and a year of Tennessee 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 $2,736 against $1,709 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 — $691 in North Dakota, $0 in Tennessee. Tennessee 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 — $3,722 in North Dakota, $2,012 in Tennessee 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. Tennessee 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: $25,232 in North Dakota against $22,832 in Tennessee — 25.2% and 22.8% of gross.
And Tennessee housing costs 10.8% more
These two states cost almost the same to live in, which is why the tax difference survives into the answer. The index is the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity — official, published per state, 100 is the national average — and it is worth looking at the components even when the headline barely moves, because they can disagree with it.
Cheaper in Tennessee than North DakotaDearer in Tennessee than North Dakota
Each bar is how far apart North Dakota and Tennessee 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 — 89 in North Dakota, 91.9 in Tennessee. A gap of 2.9 points.
Housing — 71.4 against 79.1. A gap of 7.7 points, 2.7× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 95.7 against 96.2, 0.5 points apart — 15.4 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 — 73.7 against 72.1. 1.6 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 North Dakota and Tennessee is $2,031 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 $39. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $1,992 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $100,052
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Tennessee to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in North Dakota?
$100,052. That is 0.1% more than you earn now. Anything less than $100,052 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 Tennessee. 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 × 91.9/89 — gives $103,258. The answer is $100,052, so the shortcut is $3,206 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 Tennessee is $39,114, 2.2% below what you earn; on $250,000 it is $250,617, 0.2% above. The relationship bends by 2.5% across that range.
Over 10 years: $395
Ten years of a difference this small is still a small number: $395. Which is the point — on a horizon long enough for compounding to matter, this pair still does not separate on money.
At $39 a year of real difference, 10 years in North Dakota instead of Tennessee is worth $395 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 $39 a year it takes 380.2 years to recover — so the annual figure only becomes yours from year 382.
At three horizons: $118 over three years, $395 over 10, $1,184 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 North Dakota and Tennessee. That is what the $100,052 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 $39 a year. Choosing where inside North Dakota to live is worth $3,665 a year on the same $400,000 home — 92.9 times as much.
North Dakota has 53 counties and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.37% in Billings County to 1.29% in Foster 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 "North Dakota or Tennessee", the decision that carries the money is which county inside North Dakota — 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: Tennessee 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 North Dakota or Tennessee?
- On $100,000 they come out level — $84,009 of purchasing power in North Dakota against $83,969 in Tennessee, a difference of $39 a year. That is unusual and worth knowing, because the headline rates are not level at all: state income tax is $691 against $0 and property tax $3,722 against $2,012. They cancel out.
- How much do I need to earn in Tennessee to match $100,000 in North Dakota?
- $100,052 — 0.1% more. That accounts for federal tax, FICA, state tax, property tax and the price level in each state.
- What are the taxes in North Dakota vs Tennessee?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $691 in North Dakota against $0 in Tennessee, and property tax of $3,722 against $2,012 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 Tennessee really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Tennessee runs from 0.31% in Cumberland County to 1.03% in Shelby County — 3.4 times, or $2,911 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 0.5%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $395 in today's purchasing power, at $39 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.