2026 · tax + cost of living · property tax by county
North Dakota vs Texas
A tax calculator says the difference is $592 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, North Dakota is $7,617 ahead — $76,172 over 10 years.
Clearly better in North Dakota$7,617 a yearWorth 7.6% of your salary a year, every year you stay. This one is not a rounding error.
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.
Step 1 of 4 · no account, nothing saved
Does it work everywhere in Texas?
One dot per county in Texas. It works in none of them.North Dakota is ahead by
$7,617 a year
in what the money buys · $76,172 over 10 years
To live the same in Texas, earn
$110,514
You need 10.5% more for the move to break even.
Federal + FICAState income taxProperty taxTake-home
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 Texas 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.
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 Texas
States that sit near Texas on prices compared against North Dakota, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
Texas has no income tax, and against North Dakota that is worth only $592 — here is where it goes
Texas 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 $691 a year on $100,000 — what North Dakota would have taken.
The actual change in take-home is $592, because Texas charges more property tax: $5,004 against $3,722 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 — 89 against 97.1 on the official index — leaving a real difference of $7,617 a year in favour of North Dakota, 12.9× the nominal figure.
Where the two sit nationally: Texas is the 25th 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 96.5.
From North Dakota to Texas, step by step
Grey columns are what a year of North Dakota and a year of Texas 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 5.4 times more than the largest single tax difference between North Dakota and Texas. 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 — $691 in North Dakota, $0 in Texas. Texas 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, $5,004 in Texas 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. Texas 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 $25,824 in Texas — 25.2% and 25.8% of gross.
And Texas housing costs 35.2% more
The cost of living gap between North Dakota and Texas 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.
Price level, component by component
All items
89 → 97.1
Housing
71.4 → 96.5
Goods
95.7 → 98.1
Utilities
73.7 → 87.5
Services
91.2 → 97.1
Cheaper in Texas than North DakotaDearer in Texas than North Dakota
Each bar is how far apart North Dakota and Texas 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, 97.1 in Texas. A gap of 8.1 points.
Housing — 71.4 against 96.5. A gap of 25.1 points, 3.1× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 95.7 against 98.1, 2.4 points apart — 10.5 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 — 73.7 against 87.5. 13.8 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 Texas is $6,645 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 $7,617. So buying widens the gap by $972: the more house you own, the more this comparison is worth to you.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $110,514
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Texas to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in North Dakota?
$110,514. That is 10.5% more than you earn now. Anything less than $110,514 and the move costs you money however it is presented.
What you would need to earn in Texas, at every salary
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Texas. 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 × 97.1/89 — gives $109,101. The answer is $110,514, so the shortcut is $1,413 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 Texas is $45,062, 12.7% above what you earn; on $250,000 it is $270,823, 8.3% above. The relationship bends by 4.3% across that range.
"North Dakota" and "Texas" are not places you can compare
Every figure above uses each state's median local property tax rate — its counties in North Dakota, its counties in Texas — and that is a simplification the page should own rather than hide.
Texas has 250 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.33% in Crockett County to 2.09% in El Paso County — 6.3 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $7,013 a year, without leaving the state.
Every county in Texas, by effective property tax rate
250 counties. Each dot is one. The spread is 6.3 times from end to end, which is why a state average is not a number you can plan with.
North Dakota has 53 counties, and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.37% in Billings County to 1.29% in Foster County — 3.5 times. On a $400,000 home that is a spread of $3,665 a year, without leaving the state.
So the honest version of this question is not "North Dakota or Texas" but which county. Picking the cheapest county in Texas against the dearest county in North Dakota swings the property tax line by $3,808 a year; the reverse choice swings it $6,870 the other way. Against a headline difference of $7,617, the county is not a detail — it is most of the decision.
Neither North Dakota nor Texas 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 North Dakota and Texas are easier to compare honestly than most neighbours are.
Over 10 years: $76,172
Nobody moves for one year, and almost no comparison prices the decision over the horizon on which it is actually made.
At $7,617 a year of real difference, 10 years in North Dakota instead of Texas is worth $76,172 in today's purchasing power — before compounding anything you might invest it in.
Cumulative, with moving costs counted
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 $7,617 a year it takes 2.0 years to earn back, so a stay shorter than that loses money on a move the annual figure calls a win.
At three horizons: $22,852 over three years, $76,172 over 10, $228,516 over thirty.
None of those figures contains the one variable that could overturn them: the same job rarely pays the same in North Dakota and Texas. That is what the $110,514 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.
North Dakota, by $7,617 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $592; the rest comes from the cost of living, where North Dakota indexes at 89 and Texas at 97.1 against a national average of 100.
How much do I need to earn in Texas to match $100,000 in North Dakota?
$110,514 — 10.5% 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 Texas?
On $100,000: state income tax of $691 in North Dakota against $0 in Texas, and property tax of $3,722 against $5,004 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 Texas really have lower property tax?
That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Texas runs from 0.33% in Crockett County to 2.09% in El Paso County — 6.3 times, or $7,013 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 1.25%.
How much is the difference over 10 years?
$76,172 in today's purchasing power, at $7,617 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.
