Moving from Texas at $90,000 to California at $120,000 raises take-home by $12,630 in raw dollars, but only $2,281 once adjusted for California's higher cost of living.
| Location | Salary | Take-home | In national-average dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $90,000 | $72,145 | $74,300 |
| California | $120,000 | $84,775 | $76,581 |
Take-home pay is divided by each state's 2024 Regional Price Parity (US average = 100) to restate it in national-average dollars -- a state-level PRICE index, not a personal budget. Source: BEA, Real Personal Consumption Expenditures by State and Real Personal Income by State, 2024 (BEA 26-10), verified 2026-08-14.
It depends on whether the raise survives two separate reductions: the new state's tax burden, and its cost of living relative to where you are now. A 33% raw salary increase moving into a much more expensive state can shrink to a modest gain -- or a real pay cut -- once both are accounted for. The example below (Texas to California) shows exactly this: the raw take-home increase is meaningfully larger than the cost-of-living-adjusted one.
It restates your take-home pay in "national-average dollars" -- what an equivalent basket of goods would cost you compared to the US average, using the Bureau of Economic Analysis's Regional Price Parities. A dollar earned in a below-average-cost state effectively buys more than the same dollar in an above-average-cost one; this adjustment makes that comparable across states.
The BEA's Regional Price Parities are the most authoritative state-level cost-of-living index available, but they lag: this calculator uses the 2024 release (the most recent available), which BEA supersedes only once a year. It's a state AVERAGE, not a city or neighborhood figure -- BEA itself notes that housing rents are usually the main driver of the differences between states, so your actual cost of living may differ meaningfully from the state figure depending on exactly where you'd live.
For state income tax, what matters is legal domicile/residency, not simply where you're physically typing from -- states have their own, sometimes aggressive, rules for what establishes residency and what doesn't relieve you of your prior state's tax claim. A remote worker who can genuinely choose their state of residence should weigh both the no-income-tax states (see the tax-arbitrage rankings) and their cost of living together, the same two factors this calculator combines -- but establishing residency correctly is a legal question this calculator does not evaluate.
No -- Regional Price Parities are published at the state level only. A move to a state's most expensive metro area (San Francisco within California, for instance) will cost more than the state average reflects, and a move to a lower-cost part of the same state will cost less. Treat the state figure as a starting point, not a precise city-level estimate.
An hourly rate as an annual figure, at whatever hours you actually work.
Work backwards from the take-home you need to the salary that produces it.
What a raise adds after the marginal rate takes its share.
Two scenarios, every line that changed, ranked by size and only the causes it can prove.
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