Vermont vs Virginia
A tax calculator says the difference is $3,528 a year. Once you count what a dollar actually buys in each, Virginia is $1,356 ahead — $13,558 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 Virginia?
in what the money buys · $13,558 over 10 years
A pay cut of up to $2,122 (2.1%) 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: Vermont and Virginia 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 Vermont or Virginia
States that sit near Virginia on prices compared against Vermont, and the mirror of that. The comparison you would run next.
- Arizona vs Vermont— Arizona by $4,901
- Illinois vs Vermont— Vermont by $2,612
- Nevada vs Vermont— Nevada by $7,548
- Pennsylvania vs Virginia— Pennsylvania by $1,718
- Minnesota vs Virginia— level
- Texas vs Virginia— Texas by $5,435
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.
- Grand Isle County, Vermont— 1.36%, the cheapest
- Windsor County, Vermont— 1.98%, the dearest
- Prince Edward County, Virginia— 0.40%, the cheapest
- Manassas Park city, Virginia— 1.14%, the dearest
Similar in price to Vermont
States that sit next to Vermont on the price index — often the comparison people should have run.
- Delaware— 99.8 on prices
- Utah— 98.9 on prices
- Minnesota— 98.6 on prices
- Pennsylvania— 97.6 on prices
- Every Vermont comparison— all 50
- Every Virginia comparison— all 50
- The nine states with no income tax— and what they charge instead
Vermont or Virginia is a housing decision: Virginia housing runs 23.5% dearer
The tax difference between Vermont and Virginia is real but it is not what decides this one. On $100,000 with a $400,000 home, take-home moves by $3,528 a year. Housing moves by far more: the housing component of the official price index is 86.5 in Vermont against 106.8 in Virginia, a gap of 20.3 points against just 3.1 on the index as a whole.
Which means a single blended cost-of-living number would hide the only variable that matters here. Put the housing gap into the arithmetic and Virginia comes out $1,356 a year ahead in what the money buys — $13,558 over 10 years. If you rent a small flat, most of that advantage never reaches you; if you buy a family house, it is understated.
Where the two sit nationally: Virginia is the 16th most expensive place to live of the 51 — the 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Vermont is 23rd. Housing, the component that moves most, is 86.5 against 106.8.
Grey columns are what a year of Vermont and a year of Virginia 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 on this pair property tax is the biggest single difference — $4,324 against $796 for the income tax everybody quotes:
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 — $4,140 in Vermont, $4,936 in Virginia. A difference of $796.
Property tax — $6,831 in Vermont, $2,507 in Virginia 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. Both Vermont and Virginia keep income tax at the state level only, so the figures above are complete rather than approximations.
Total: $31,791 in Vermont against $28,263 in Virginia — 31.8% and 28.3% of gross.
And Virginia housing costs 23.5% more
The cost of living gap between Vermont and Virginia 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 Virginia than VermontDearer in Virginia than Vermont
Each bar is how far apart Vermont and Virginia 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 — 98 in Vermont, 101.1 in Virginia. A gap of 3.1 points.
Housing — 86.5 against 106.8. A gap of 20.3 points, 6.5× the headline gap. This is what people mean when they say somewhere is expensive.
Goods — 97.3 against 100.4, 3.1 points apart — 6.5 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 — 125.8 against 92.2. 33.6 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 Vermont and Virginia is $3,135 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 $1,356. So renting is where the gap is widest here, by $1,780 — unusual, and it means buying erodes the advantage rather than compounding it.
The number to take into a salary negotiation: $97,878
This is the question people are actually asking and almost nobody answers: what would I need to earn in Virginia to live exactly as well as I do on $100,000 in Vermont?
$97,878. That is 2.1% less than you earn now. You could take a pay cut of $2,122 moving to Virginia and be no worse off — which is a very different conversation to have with a recruiter than "Virginia has lower taxes".
The dashed line is the salary you earn now. The solid line is what matches it in Virginia. 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 × 101.1/98 — gives $103,163. The answer is $97,878, so the shortcut is $5,285 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 Virginia is $36,107, 9.7% below what you earn; on $250,000 it is $248,532, 0.6% below. The relationship bends by 9.1% across that range.
Over 10 years: $13,558
At $1,356 a year, 10 years in Virginia comes to $13,558 — and the county choice inside Virginia is worth $29,320 over the same period. Both are real; only one of them is in the headline.
At $1,356 a year of real difference, 10 years in Virginia instead of Vermont is worth $13,558 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 $1,356 a year it takes 11.1 years to recover — so the annual figure only becomes yours from year 13.
At three horizons: $4,067 over three years, $13,558 over 10, $40,673 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 Vermont and Virginia. That is what the $97,878 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 $1,356 a year. Choosing where inside Virginia to live is worth $2,932 a year on the same $400,000 home — 2.2 times as much.
Virginia has 133 counties and independent cities and the effective property tax rate runs from 0.4% in Prince Edward County to 1.14% in Manassas Park city. Move to the wrong county or independent city in the better state and you have given back more than the move gained you, twice over.
Which reframes the question. Rather than "Vermont or Virginia", the decision that carries the money is which county or independent city inside Virginia — 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: Vermont 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.
You could take a $2,122 pay cut to move to Virginia 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 Vermont takes $97,878 in Virginia — 2.1% less than you earn now. So an offer of $97,878 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 Vermont offering to match your current salary is offering you less than the Virginia job at $97,878. On 10 years the difference is $13,558.
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 Vermont or Virginia?
- Virginia, by $1,356 a year in real purchasing power on $100,000 with a $400,000 home. The take-home difference is only $3,528; the rest comes from the cost of living, where Vermont indexes at 98 and Virginia at 101.1 against a national average of 100.
- How much do I need to earn in Virginia to match $100,000 in Vermont?
- $97,878 — 2.1% less than you earn now, so a pay cut of up to $2,122 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 Vermont vs Virginia?
- On $100,000: state income tax of $4,140 in Vermont against $4,936 in Virginia, and property tax of $6,831 against $2,507 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 Virginia really have lower property tax?
- That depends entirely on the county, which is why a state-level answer is not much use. Virginia runs from 0.4% in Prince Edward County to 1.14% in Manassas Park city — 2.8 times, or $2,932 a year on a $400,000 home. The median is 0.63%.
- How much is the difference over 10 years?
- $13,558 in today's purchasing power, at $1,356 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.