Two offers, both for $150,000. One is in New York City, one is in Austin. On paper they are the same job at the same pay. In the bank they are not, and the gap is large enough that the Austin offer is worth more than a New York offer of $170,000. This is the comparison, line by line.
Federal and FICA: identical
The federal layer does not care where you live. On $150,000 a single filer pays $24,734 in federal income tax (marginal rate 24%, effective 16.5%) and $11,475 in FICA. Both cities start from the same $113,791 after federal.
State and city: $13,545 apart
Texas has no income tax and no employee payroll program. The Austin earner keeps all $113,791, which is $9,483 a month.
The New York City earner pays New York State income tax of $7,810 (marginal 5.9%), the state paid family leave premium of $355, and the city’s resident income tax of $5,379 (marginal 3.876%). That is $13,545 in state and local deductions, leaving $100,246 a year or $8,354 a month.
The monthly gap is $1,129. Over a year it is $13,545 — the entire state and city layer. The New York earner’s effective tax drag is 33.2%; the Austin earner’s is 24.2%.
Rent: the gap doubles
Median 1-bedroom asking rents in our benchmark are $3,900 in New York City and $1,450 in Austin. Against take-home pay, the New York rent is 47% of net — a level the housing-cost-burden convention classes as rent-burdened. The Austin rent is 15% of net, comfortably under the 30% guideline.
After rent, the New York earner has $4,454 a month left; the Austin earner has $8,033. The gap is now $3,579 a month, $42,948 a year. Rent, not tax, is the bigger half of the difference.
What New York would have to pay to match
To match Austin’s $9,483 monthly take-home, a New York City salary has to reach roughly $172,000 — a 15% premium on the offer. To match Austin’s $8,033 left after rent, it would need to be closer to $221,000, because every additional dollar in New York is taxed at a combined marginal rate of about 37.5% before it reaches the rent.
That second number is the honest comparison for a renter. It is also why a New York offer of $200,000 — which nets $10,875 a month, $6,975 after rent — still leaves less disposable income than the $150,000 Austin offer.
What the comparison leaves out
Everything that is not tax or rent, which is a lot. Salaries for the same role are typically higher in New York, so the like-for-like offer is rarely identical. New York has no need for a car; Austin usually does, and a car costs more than the Texas tax saving for many people. Health insurance premiums, utilities, groceries and childcare all differ. Career optionality differs. And the comparison assumes a single filer renting a 1-bedroom; a couple splitting a 2-bedroom, or a homeowner, would see different ratios.
None of that changes the mechanism. Before the softer factors, the tax code and the rental market together put a $150,000 New York offer roughly $43,000 a year behind the same offer in Austin, for a single renter. Any comparison that starts from the gross number misses most of that.
How to run this for your own pair of cities
Every audit on this site shows the same four lines — federal, FICA, state, local — and the same rent meter, so any two can be set side by side. Open the audit for your salary in each city, compare the monthly take-home, then compare the “left after rent” figure. If the higher-salary offer has the lower left-after-rent figure, the higher salary is the worse offer for a renter, whatever the letter says.
Audits cited in this guide
Open the full paycheck breakdowns
About the figures in this guide
Every dollar amount above is produced by the same deterministic tax engine that generates the audit pages, using the published 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction, the 2026 Social Security wage base, each state's published schedule and each city's local tax rules. Assumptions: single filer, standard deduction, no dependents, no itemized deductions. Rent figures are median 1-bedroom asking rents refreshed quarterly. Read the methodology, or send a correction with a primary source.