NC has a similar income tax as we do. If you make $100k in NC you'll pay $4,750 in state income tax. In CT you'd pay $4,780. In NC you will likely pay higher sales tax up to 7% depending on where you shop. NC also has an annual car property tax like we do. NC also has a driving tax a.k.a. tolls while CT has none (for now). You'll likely save big on property tax on your home, though give some of those savings back in insurance costs. On a net basis you're probably coming out ahead in terms of overall effective tax rate, but on paper it doesn't seem worth taking a haircut on income just to save a little on the tax side. I'd much rather start with the biggest pile of money I can get my hands on, and then figure out how to reduce the tax liability as much as possible. Also we use median incomes to avoid having it skewed by millionaires/billionaires. It's not an average, it's the median.