New York City residents pay four taxes on their wages: federal income tax, FICA, New York State income tax, and a separate New York City resident income tax. Texas has no state or city income tax at all, so an Austin salary faces only the first two.
| New York City | You keep | Austin equivalent | Cut you can take |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 | $70,561 | $87,749 | $12,251 |
| $150,000 | $99,405 | $128,952 | $21,048 |
| $200,000 | $129,044 | $172,316 | $27,684 |
| $300,000 | $181,863 | $247,991 | $52,009 |
The tax New York calculators tend to miss
Above $107,650, New York levies a supplemental tax that claws back the benefit of its lower brackets, so high earners pay their top marginal rate on all their income rather than progressively. Most comparison tools use the headline bracket table and skip it, which understates New York by thousands of dollars for exactly the people most likely to be weighing up a move.
This site uses New York State's own annual withholding schedule instead, which has the recapture built in. You can tell it is doing something unusual by looking at its published rates, which run 5.90%, 7.03%, 7.53%, 6.40%, 11.44%, 7.35% — they go down and up again, because the recapture is being spread across those lines.
What this does not settle
Tax is the part that can be calculated exactly. Housing is the part that decides it, and this comparison excludes it entirely. Rent, property taxes, car ownership, health insurance and childcare all differ enormously between the two cities, and in several of those Texas is not the cheaper option it is assumed to be.
Treat the figure above as the size of the tax advantage, not the size of the total advantage. It tells you how much room you have to negotiate, not whether to go.
Other salaries and other cities: New York against Austin at every income, or start from the comparison tool.