How it's figured, and what it leaves out

• Top rate is the highest rate in the state's single-filer schedule as of 1 January 2026, including surtaxes the schedule lists (California's 13.3% includes the 1% tax on income over $1 million; Massachusetts's 9% includes its 4% surtax). Local income taxes are left out; where a state has them, the state card shows their average as a share of income. Washington taxes only capital gains, so it counts here as no tax on wages; South Carolina's top rate was scheduled to change on 1 July 2026, after this table.
• Income tax on your wages is bracket arithmetic: wages less the state's standard deduction and personal exemption, run through its brackets, less any credit the table lists in their place. It ignores phase-outs, recapture rules and alternative tables; states where those apply are marked ≈, and there the true figure can be higher (Connecticut and New York, for instance, phase out their lower brackets for high earners). It also ignores credits, dependents, local income taxes, and the three states (Alabama, Missouri, Oregon) that let you deduct some federal tax. Where the 2026 inflation adjustment wasn't out, the table carries 2025 brackets or deductions.
• Sales tax is the population-weighted average: the rate a typical shopper in the state pays, not the rate in any one town. The highest single local rate is shown where the Tax Foundation's spreadsheet and its web table agree (they don't for Alabama and Iowa). Groceries, services and other exemptions differ by state and aren't modelled.
• Property tax is the median real estate tax paid on owner-occupied homes divided by their median value, from the Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey (1-year for states, 2020–2024 5-year for counties). A ratio of medians is a typical rate, not a bill: homestead exemptions, assessment caps (California's Proposition 13 keeps long-held homes' bills low) and how long owners have stayed all move it. The Census tops out taxes paid at $10,000 for counties, so a county at that cap shows as "$10,000+". Connecticut's counties are blank: the 2020–2024 data use its new planning regions, which the county outlines predate.
• All state and local taxes is the Tax Foundation's estimate of state and local taxes paid by a state's residents (to any state) as a share of the state's net product, for calendar 2022, its latest edition. It's an economy-wide average, not what any household pays.

Sources

Every rate and dollar figure is read out of these tables by scripts/build_data.py, which writes data.js. Fetched 8 October 2026.

• Tax Foundation, State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, 2026 (Andrey Yushkov, February 2026): rates, brackets, standard deductions and personal exemptions as of 1 January 2026, and footnote (a)'s average local income tax rates (2023). Spot-checked: California's brackets match the Franchise Tax Board's 2025 rate schedules (Will a Raise Cost Me? parses them); North Carolina's 3.99% matches NCDOR's rate schedule page. The table gives California's standard deduction as $5,540 against the FTB booklet's $5,706 for 2025; the map keeps the Tax Foundation figure so every state comes from one table.
• Tax Foundation, 2026 Sales Tax Rates, Midyear Update (rates as of 1 July 2026) and its spreadsheet Sales-Tax-Data-Midyear-2026.xlsx; the script checks every state against the web table. California's 7.25% state rate also matches the CDTFA's rate page. The source lists rates by state, not by city, so no city rates are shown.
• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, tables B25103 (median real estate taxes paid) and B25077 (median value), owner-occupied housing units: 2024 1-year for states and the US, 2020–2024 5-year for counties (table-based summary files). Cross-checked against the Tax Foundation's Property Taxes by State and County, 2026: 3,115 of its 3,139 county rows carry the same two medians; its state rates, figured a little differently, agree with these within 0.1 percentage point for 47 of 51 (the widest gap is New York, 0.15).
• Tax Foundation, State and Local Tax Burdens by State (calendar year 2022), Table 1. The article's text gives Hawaii 14.9% where Table 1 gives 14.1%; the map uses the table.
• County outlines: us-atlas 3.0.1 (Mike Bostock, from the Census Bureau's cartographic boundary files), counties-albers-10m.json, loaded from jsDelivr when you open the county view.

Method. The map colors states (or counties) in five bands with equal numbers of places in each, plus a separate band for zero. The household comparison is arithmetic on the rates above and your inputs; nothing is estimated.

It illustrates the lesson Taxes: brackets, deductions, credits in the personal finance guide; for how federal and California brackets stack on one paycheck, see Will a Raise Cost Me? This page shows published rates and arithmetic on them. It is not tax or financial advice, and what you'd owe depends on far more than it asks.