About two-thirds of Americans believe they pay too much in taxes, and only about 25% believe they get good value in return for their money. Add in the maddening complexity of our tax code and the plethora of (often insane) advice flying around, and it’s easy to see why people put so much effort into avoiding as much tax as they can.
Of course it can be beneficial to reduce the amount of tax that you have to pay every year. If you have the flexibility and a portable income stream that you can take with you, moving to a tax-advantaged area can be an effective way to accomplish that—but it’s not as simple as googling states with no income tax and hopping on Zillow. You need to consider the overall tax burden, and then get creative.
Tax burden
A good starting place is what’s known as a state’s tax burden—the impact that taxes collectively have on your pocketbook and ability to pay your other bills. The Tax Foundation website has a collection of data maps that can make looking up the specific tax situation in a state or locality relatively easy. This information can help figure out which states actually have the lowest tax burden when you consider all the taxes you might have to pay while living there.
For example, you might assume that any state with zero income tax (there are nine—Alaska, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, and Washington) would be a great choice in terms of overall tax burden—but when Money Geek analyzed state taxes they gave New Hampshire a C grade and ranked it 32nd out of 50 in terms of taxes. That’s because New Hampshire also has some of the highest property taxes in the country, which knocks back some of the benefit of having no income tax.
According to the MoneyGeek report, the top 10 best states in terms of overall tax burden are Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming, with each of those states getting an A grade except Montana, which received a B. If you think you’d be happy living in those states, you’ll get the most bang for your no-tax buck.
Look for which states your state borders
Moving to a low-tax burden state is a great start, but you can manage to lower your personal tax burden a little more if you choose the precise location of your home carefully. The real trick is to look for states with no income tax (and an overall good tax burden grade) that border states with no sales tax. If you live in a spot where driving back and forth between the two states is convenient, you can live in the state without income tax and shop in the state without sales tax.
There are, currently, three areas where this trick will work: If you live in Washington state and do your shopping over the border in Oregon, you get the best of both worlds. And if you live in Wyoming or South Dakota and can get into Montana to shop, you once again dodge both taxes—although it’s important to note that while there’s no statewide sales tax in Montana, some sales taxes can be implemented at the local level, so you’ll need to do a bit of research to ensure you pick the right spot.
Finally, Arizona, Nevada, and Tennessee are states with an A grade in tax burden, no income tax, and also some of the lowest property tax rates in the country (all under 0.50% in terms of effective property tax rate). If border living isn’t your cup of tea, choosing to live in one of these states gets you the next best overall situation.
