As you prepare your annual return, you may already be sensing what a national financial website has found for yet another year in its comparison of how much Americans are taxed in each state: Mainers shoulder some of the nation’s highest tax burdens, according to a recent study conducted by personal finance website WalletHub.
The rankings released Tuesday are based on the ratio of residents’ tax bills to the average price of the taxed item.
Using this ratio, Maine was found to have the fifth highest vehicle tax rate and eighteenth highest property tax rate in the nation.
Other methods previously employed by WalletHub have found that Mainers bear an even greater burden compared to taxpayers from other states.
Most notably, Maine taxpayers have the highest property tax burden — and the fourth highest tax burden overall — when the amount owed to the government is taken as a percentage of residents’ personal income.
Tuesday’s study — which focused on the “effective rate” of taxes versus value — found that Mainers are taxed at an average rate of 1.1 percent on their property.
This would result in a hypothetical bill of $2,926 on a home priced at the state’s median value of $266,400.
New Jersey was found to have the highest rate at 2.23 percent, while Hawaii came in the lowest at .27 percent.
Nationwide, Democratic states were found to impose a greater property tax burden on their residents than Republican states.
To determine which states were labeled as red and which as blue, WalletHub looked to the results of the 2024 presidential election.
Maine drivers were found to be taxed at an “effective rate” of 2.4 percent, meaning that a driver would hypothetically be responsible for paying $689 per year in taxes on a car worth $28,700.
Because this amount corresponds to a mill rate of .0240 — the tax imposed upon cars in their first year — it is indicative that the state’s relative position is based only on the tax burden imposed upon vehicles in the first year, not on the overall tax bill paid over a vehicle’s lifetime.
In addition to imposing a recurring tax on vehicle owners, Maine also requires that cars receive an annual safety inspection.
This finding is consistent with those of previous years, both in terms of the percent of tax Mainers owe on their vehicles, as well as the state’s position relative to others nationwide.
Virginia was calculated to have the highest rate in the nation at 3.97 percent, compared to Louisiana at just .1 percent. A large number of states were found to impose no vehicle tax on their residents, resulting in several 0 percent tax states.
Previous studies by WalletHub have also ranked Maine among the top most heavily taxed states in the country.
When looking at tax as a share of personal income, Mainers were found to be paying an aggregated 10.74 percent of the money they make each year to the state government for a number of different taxes, including property tax, income tax, and sales and excise tax.
Alaska was found to have the lowest overall burden at just 4.93 percent, while New Yorkers bore the highest burden at 12.02 percent.
Looking at more granular-level data, Mainers were shown to be paying an average of 2.59 percent in state income tax, 3.29 percent of their income in sales and excise tax, and 4.86 percent of what they earned in property taxes.
This represented the highest tax-to-income ratio for property taxes in the country. The remaining top spots were occupied by other Northeastern states, including Vermont (4.85 percent), New Jersey (4.59 percent), and New Hampshire (4.51 percent).
Click Here to Read WalletHub’s Full 2025 Property and Vehicle Tax Study
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