"Move to Texas, there's no state income tax" is one of those bits of advice everyone has heard. But how much bigger is a Texas paycheck than a New York one, really? I ran the same salaries through both calculators on SalaryPayTools to put an actual number on it.
Settings for every example below: single filer, paid biweekly (26 checks a year), standard W-4, no 401(k) or insurance deductions.
At $75,000
Each paycheck starts at $2,884.62 gross in both states. Federal withholding ($295.00), Social Security ($178.85) and Medicare ($41.83) are identical, because those are federal. The only difference is the state line.
- New York: take-home about $2,236.13 per check, after an estimated $132.81 of state income tax
- Texas: take-home about $2,368.94 per check, with $0 state income tax
That's a gap of $132.81 per paycheck, or about $3,450 a year. Put another way, New York State tax works out to roughly 4.6% of a $75,000 salary in this example.
You can check these on the New York paycheck calculator and the Texas paycheck calculator.
At $100,000
- New York: about $2,858.47 per check (estimated state tax $186.91)
- Texas: about $3,045.38 per check
The gap grows to about $187 a paycheck, or roughly $4,860 a year, about 4.9% of salary.
Why the difference is smaller than the headline rate
New York's top state rate is around 10.9%, which sounds dramatic. But New York uses graduated brackets, and the top rates only apply to very high incomes. For most salaried workers, the first chunks of income are taxed at roughly 4% to 6%, and the standard deduction shields part of your pay entirely. So the effective rate on a middle-class salary ends up in the 4% to 5% range, not 10%.
What these numbers leave out (and it matters)
Here's the honest part. The comparison above is state income tax only, and the New York side has a few extra costs that can widen the gap:
- New York City income tax. If you live in NYC, the city adds its own income tax on top, roughly 3% to 4% for most earners. Yonkers has its own surcharge too. My calculator excludes local taxes, so a NYC resident should expect a noticeably smaller check than the New York figure above.
- Disability and Paid Family Leave. Most New York employers deduct small amounts for state disability insurance and Paid Family Leave. These are usually modest, but they're there.
- Commuters. If you live in New Jersey or Connecticut and work in New York, the tax rules get more complicated, because you'll typically file in both states.
On the Texas side, the paycheck really is that simple: no state income tax and, for regular employees, no state payroll deductions.
The paycheck isn't the whole budget
A $3,000 to $5,000 yearly difference is real, but it rarely decides a move by itself. Texas makes up some of its revenue with property taxes that are among the higher ones in the country, which shows up in rent and home prices. New York salaries in many fields also run higher for the same role. The fair comparison is take-home pay minus your biggest costs (housing, transport, insurance), not just take-home pay.
How I'd compare two offers
- Run each salary through its own state calculator, not just the same salary in both states. A $75,000 offer in Austin versus an $85,000 offer in Albany is the more realistic question.
- Subtract the 401(k) and insurance you'd actually have at each job.
- If the New York job is in the city, knock off another 3% to 4% for city tax.
- Compare the monthly result with real rent listings in both places.
That gives you a number you can trust a lot more than "no income tax" on its own.
If you want to try other combinations, there are calculators for 14 states on SalaryPayTools, all using the same 2026 federal rules so the comparisons stay apples to apples.
Figures come from the SalaryPayTools New York and Texas calculators (2026 rules, single, biweekly). They're estimates, not tax advice, and exclude local taxes and pre-tax deductions.
Faishal Ali
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