State Move Salary Comparison Calculator — Maine
Compare two states on what actually reaches your pocket — state income tax, housing, sales tax and property tax — and solve for the salary a move would need to pay to leave you even Figures shown for Maine.
Where you are now
Rent, or mortgage principal and interest
For property tax. Leave at zero if renting.
Left over$67,446per year, after tax and housing
Moving to Maine
Worse offMaine
Rent, or mortgage principal and interest
For property tax. Leave at zero if renting.
Left over$61,576per year, after tax and housing
Maine: what changes
Moving to Maine costs a single filer on $120,000 about $14,230 a year in combined state income, sales and property tax.
- Top income tax rate
- 7.15%
- About $8,060 on a $120,000 salary.
- Average sales tax
- 5.5%
- Roughly $1,210 a year on $22,000 of taxable spending.
- Property tax rate
- 1.24%
- About $4,960 a year on a $400,000 home.
On that combined measure Maine is the 6th most expensive of the 51 jurisdictions we track. Maine taxes wage income up to 7.15%, so a nominal raise into the state is worth less than it looks before housing is even considered. None of this counts housing, which usually moves the answer further than all three taxes put together — put your real rent or mortgage into the calculator above to see the difference that makes.
For comparison: Illinois (highest at $16,209/yr), and Wyoming (lowest at $3,517/yr).
The question every remote worker eventually has to answer
“$120,000 in Austin or $150,000 in Seattle” looks like it should be easy. It is a 25 percent raise. Then someone mentions state income tax, someone else mentions rent, and the conversation dissolves into a cost-of-living index that nobody trusts and everybody quotes.
The reason it feels hard is that four different things move at once, and they move by very different amounts. This calculator runs both states through the same maintained tax data the take-home pay calculator uses, subtracts what you actually have to spend to live in each, and reports the money that genuinely reaches your life.
Then it does the more useful thing: it solves for the salary the destination would have to offer for you to break even.
Housing dominates, not tax
The single most common error in this comparison is over-weighting state income tax and under-weighting rent.
State income tax across the US ranges from nothing to roughly 13 percent at the top, and for most earners the difference between two states is a few percent of gross. That is real money and it is not the main event.
Housing routinely differs by 50 to 100 percent between metros for equivalent space. On a $120,000 salary, moving from $2,000 to $3,400 a month in rent costs $16,800 a year of after-tax money — which is considerably more than the entire state income tax bill in most states.
This is why blended cost-of-living indices mislead. They average a large housing difference together with groceries, fuel, insurance and everything bought online, all of which barely move. The average understates the thing that matters. Pricing the actual apartment or house you would take is the only reliable method, and it is what this tool asks for.
The no-income-tax states are not free money
Nine states levy no tax on wage income, and the advantage is real. It is also smaller than the headline suggests, because state governments still need revenue.
The offsets show up in two places. Sales tax tends to run higher, which affects you in proportion to how much of your income you spend on taxable goods. And property tax is frequently much higher — effective rates in some no-income-tax states are among the steepest in the country, which lands on homeowners rather than renters.
The practical consequence: a renter with modest spending captures most of the nominal benefit. A homeowner buying an expensive house may give a large share of it back through the property tax line. This calculator includes both, so you can see which case you are in rather than assuming.
What “left over” means here
The headline figure is take-home pay minus housing, minus sales tax on your taxable spending, minus property tax if you own.
That is deliberately not a full budget. Food, insurance, childcare and transport are excluded because they vary far more between households than between states, and including rough averages for them would add noise rather than accuracy while making the output look more authoritative than it deserves to.
What remains is the number that changes when you move, which is exactly the number the decision turns on.
The equivalent salary is the negotiating number
Comparing two “left over” figures tells you which is better. It does not tell you what to ask for.
The equivalent salary answers that: the gross the destination would need to pay for your discretionary income to match where you are now. It is solved numerically rather than derived, because progressive brackets and the Social Security wage base make the relationship between gross and net piecewise rather than proportional.
Take that figure into the conversation instead of a percentage. “The offer needs to be around $164,000 for this to be lateral for me, and here is the arithmetic” is a much stronger position than asking for more, and employers who hire across markets are used to the argument.
One-time costs and how long you stay
Moving costs money once and the salary difference recurs, so the two only compare when spread over the same period.
The calculator amortises the move cost across the years you expect to stay and reports the break-even in months. A move that pays back in eight months is a different proposition from one that takes four years, even at the same annual gain — and the shorter your expected tenure, the more the one-time cost matters.
The relocation cost calculator covers what the move itself runs to, including the temporary housing and storage that people consistently forget. If an employer is offering a relocation package, that is the figure to weigh it against.
What this deliberately does not model
Local income taxes. Some cities and counties levy their own — New York City, Yonkers, Philadelphia and many Ohio and Indiana municipalities among them. Where they apply they can be significant, and they are not in this comparison.
Everything that is not tax or housing. Childcare varies enormously by metro and can exceed the housing difference. Health insurance, vehicle costs, insurance premiums and utilities all move too. Each is worth pricing separately for your own situation.
Career effects. A market with more employers in your field is worth something that no annual comparison captures, and so is the opposite.
Treat this as the tax-and-housing core of the decision — the part that is computable from maintained data — and layer the rest on top yourself.
Related tools
The take-home pay calculator breaks down the withholding side for a single state in detail, with per-state pages for all 51 jurisdictions. The rent versus buy calculator covers the tenure decision once you have chosen a destination, and the home affordability calculator sets the price range the new salary supports.
On the guide side, what a raise after inflation is really worth covers why a nominal increase is not a real one, and how to compare two job offers works through the components beyond salary that a relocation offer usually changes at the same time.
How this is calculated
Left over = take-home pay − housing − sales tax on taxable spending − property tax Equivalent salary = the destination gross salary that reproduces your current "left over", solved by bisection because progressive brackets have no closed form worth maintaining.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a higher salary in a higher-tax state worth it?
- It depends almost entirely on housing rather than tax. State income tax typically moves the answer by a few percent of gross, while housing can move it by twenty or more. A large nominal raise into an expensive metro is frequently a real-terms pay cut, and the only way to know is to price the actual housing you would take rather than applying a blended cost-of-living index.
- Why do cost-of-living indices give a different answer?
- Because they average across categories that behave very differently. Housing might be 80 percent more expensive in the destination while groceries, insurance and anything bought online are close to identical. A single blended index spreads that housing difference across everything and understates it. This calculator asks for your actual housing cost on both sides instead.
- Do states with no income tax actually work out cheaper?
- Often, but not automatically. States with no wage income tax generally raise revenue elsewhere — higher sales tax, notably higher property tax, or both. For a renter with modest spending the no-income-tax advantage is close to its full nominal value; for a homeowner in a state with high effective property tax rates, a large part of it comes back out. The comparison here includes all three so the trade is visible.
- What is the equivalent salary figure?
- It is the gross salary the destination state would have to pay for your discretionary income to match what you have now, after tax, housing, sales tax and property tax. It converts an awkward multi-variable comparison into one number you can take into a negotiation, and it is usually higher than people expect when moving into an expensive housing market.
- What does this calculator leave out?
- Local income taxes levied by some cities and counties, which can be significant in places like New York City and Philadelphia. It also excludes childcare, health insurance differences, vehicle costs and any employer benefit that varies by location. Those can each be larger than the tax difference, so treat this as the tax-and-housing core of the decision rather than the whole of it.