Coffee habit in Alaska
At $75,000 income
$23,801
Rank among states we cover
50 of 51
vs. national median
-11%
50 of 51 states we can compute a coffee habit for the same way — that's where Alaska lands, at the cheap end of the range, at about $23,801 of gross income on a $75,000 salary. Real money separates the ends of a ranking like this; the middle barely differs at all. Alaska's sales tax averages 1.82% statewide, and none of it is waived for this purchase.
New Hampshire costs about the same for a coffee habit
Prices in Alaska
Everyday prices in Alaska run 1.71% above the national average. Services, the kind of spending this is, run 3.31% above average. That puts it at 13 on the price ladder, where first is the most expensive. A hundred dollars of average American shopping costs $101.72 here.
The cost above uses one national price for a coffee habit, so these local prices are not in it. See how prices break down in Alaska.
BEA regional price parity, all items: about 1.71% above the national level, rank 13 by price level, most expensive first. Other-services parity: about 3.31% above. A national-average basket costing one hundred dollars costs $102 here.
The category figures above apply a single national default price and are not adjusted for this price level. A parity measures what a basket costs, not what a salary is worth after tax. Full Alaska price-level breakdown.
Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities by state (SARPP), 2023, as of 2023-12-31.
Try your own numbers
to cover a coffee habit
$16,744 invested upfront, assuming 7% a year. Includes your starting money and its growth. An illustration, not a forecast; investment growth is separate from the purchase cost above.
- Income tax (federal, FICA, state)30%$7,057
- Sales tax1%$260
- Tip9%$2,184
- Coffee habit60%$14,300
- Income tax (federal, FICA, state)
- Sales tax
- Tip
- Coffee habit
Data for nerds — sources, confidence and assumptions
Data for nerdssources, confidence, assumptions
Where each number comes from
| Component | Amount | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Item price | $14,300.00 | Your figureHigh confidence. You supplied this, so it is exact by definition. |
| Sales tax | $260.26 | JurisdictionalMedium confidence. The right jurisdiction, but special districts within it can vary — bounded, and we know the range. |
| Tip | $2,184.04 | Behavioural normMedium confidence. A convention rather than a fact, and editable — changing it moves the estimate with you. |
| Income tax to earn it | $7,057.12 | StatutoryHigh confidence. This number is the law — federal, FICA and state tax rates are published rates, so the only real risk is staleness. |
Jurisdiction applied
- State:
AK - Sales tax county:
Statewide average - Local income tax: none selected
Assumptions
- We use the standard sales tax rate for your county.
- We assume a 15% tip by default on coffee-shop purchases. Change it if you make coffee at home instead.
- The comparison assumes any money you don't spend gets invested at the long-run market return, not just kept as cash.
- Sales tax applies at the standard rate for your county.
- A 15% tip is assumed by default on coffee-shop purchases — edit if you brew at home.
- The compounding comparison assumes the money not spent is invested at the long-run market return, not left in cash.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index, coffee as of 2026-01-01
Your position in the tax system
29.65% on the next dollarEvery extra dollar you earn is taxed at your marginal rate, not your average one — which is why a purchase costs more to fund than a paycheck stub suggests.
Marginal rates are read in gross-income terms: below the standard deduction an extra dollar of pay adds nothing to taxable income, so the true rate there is 0%, not the lowest bracket's. Excludes pre-tax deductions (401(k), HSA), which would lower all three.
Same purchase, different state
AK is #2 of 51The purchase inputs and income stay the same. Your row uses your calculator settings; other states use example counties and omit local income tax. Spread across all 51: $6,249, from New Hampshire to California.
- $23,376
- Alaskayou$23,801
- $29,625
Choose a state name to compare against somewhere else.
Where every dollar goes
30% never reaches youThe $23,801.42 you must earn, followed to where it lands. Select a band to isolate it.
- Federal income tax$5,236.31
- FICA (Social Security + Medicare)$1,820.81
- Coffee habit$14,300.00
- Sales tax$260.26
- Tip$2,184.04
Each tax layer is the extra tax this purchase causes — that layer's tax at your income subtracted from its tax at your income plus the gross-up — so bracket boundaries the purchase straddles are handled correctly rather than smoothed over with an average rate.
Is a raise actually a raise?
you keep 70%A raise arrives on top of everything you already earn, so it is taxed at your marginal rate — not the average rate on your whole salary.
Federal, FICA, state and any local income tax — no pre-tax deductions, benefit changes, or payroll withholding quirks, all of which move the real figure. Moving into a higher bracket never taxes the income below the threshold: only the dollars above it pay the higher rate.
The arithmetic, for Alaska
Every figure below is computed, not illustrated — this is the actual chain the calculator walks for a single filer earning $75,000 in Alaska, in the 2026 tax year. Follow it down and you can check our work.
| Gross salary | $75,000 | Where every calculation starts. |
|---|---|---|
| Less the federal standard deduction | −$16,100 | The 2026 figure for a single filer. |
| Federally taxable income | $58,900 | What the bracket table is applied to. |
| Federal income tax | −$7,670 | Top bracket reached: 22.00%. |
| FICA — Social Security and Medicare | −$5,738 | 7.65% up to the wage base, then 1.45% above it. |
| Alaska taxable income | $75,000 | This state grants no deduction against this income. |
| Alaska income tax | −$0 | This line is genuinely zero — Alaska does not tax wage income at all. |
| Take-home pay | $61,593 | $13,408 withheld — 17.88% of the salary never reaches you. |
The tag price and the true cost are never the same number: earning one dollar to spend takes roughly 1.22 of them here — that's the multiplier applied to every purchase on this page.
What's different about Alaska
- There is no state income tax in Alaska. The line is 0% — zero, not low. That one absence explains most of why this purchase needs less earned income here. It ranks 43 nationally, a place it shares with every other state charging nothing.
- Sales tax across Alaska averages about 1.82% combined. Local rates move within a state far more than most people expect. Your own county may sit either side of this number.
- A coffee habit in Alaska ranks 50 — among the cheapest anywhere, at $23,801 of gross income. Compare California at the expensive end, which needs $29,625.
- The closest state to Alaska on this purchase is New Hampshire, at $23,376 — $425 apart. Politically these two can feel nothing alike. Add up the whole stack and they still land a few dollars from each other.
- Alaska collects at the register rather than the pay stub — sales tax, but no income tax. That trade matters. "No income tax" on its own is a poor guide to whether a state is cheap.
- No state individual income tax applies in Alaska, which places it at 0% effective and rank 43 nationally — a rank shared with every other state levying nothing, since equal rates tie under standard competition ranking. The distinction from a low-rate state matters: the withholding line is absent from the stack entirely, which is why the earned-income requirement here diverges most sharply from states whose headline rates look modest.
- Combined state and local sales tax across Alaska averages about 1.82%. Intra-state variation in the local component routinely exceeds a percentage point, and this figure is a statewide average rather than a named county — so it describes no particular address, and a specific jurisdiction can sit meaningfully above or below it.
- At rank 50, a coffee habit in Alaska requires $23,801 of gross income — near the national minimum. California anchors the opposite end at $29,625, and the difference is jurisdictional throughout.
- New Hampshire is the nearest state to Alaska on this purchase at $23,376, a difference of $425. Full-stack totals routinely converge across states whose statutory structures and politics differ sharply, because the earn-side and spend-side layers offset one another.
- Alaska collects on the spend side: a general sales tax with no individual income tax. The substitution is why headline "no income tax" comparisons mislead — the revenue is recovered at the point of sale, and the incidence simply falls on consumption instead of earnings.
What this page can't tell you
Worth being straight about, because a number without its limits is just a claim.
- These figures assume one filer with no dependants. They also assume nothing goes into a retirement account or an HSA before tax, and no itemized deductions. Any of those would cut the tax. That would cut the true cost too.
- Sales tax here uses Statewide average to stand in for the whole state. Rates move between counties, often by more than a full point. Live somewhere else? Put your own combined rate into the calculator. The result will follow.
- Ownership costs fall back on national averages sometimes. That happens where a state figure does not exist, or could not be checked against a primary source. The data panel on the result says so outright when it does. We do not dress an estimate up as a measurement.
- Figures assume a single filer with no dependants, no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions, and the standard deduction rather than itemized deductions. Each of those would reduce taxable income and therefore the gross-up, so the figures here should be read as an upper bound on the earn-side requirement for this household shape.
- The sales-tax component uses Statewide average as a representative jurisdiction for Alaska. Intra-state variation in the local component commonly exceeds a percentage point, so an address elsewhere in the state will diverge; the calculator accepts a user-supplied combined rate for that reason.
- Ownership-layer inputs fall back to national averages where a state-level figure is unavailable or could not be verified against a primary source. Those fallbacks are disclosed per-figure in the provenance panel rather than being silently blended into the total, so an estimate is never presented with the same confidence as a measurement.
Questions people ask
Why is this cheaper in Alaska?
Most of the difference happens before you reach the shop. A lighter bite out of income means the same purchase starts from $23,801 — $2,935 less than mid-pack.
Alaska has no income tax, so why do I still need to earn this much?
Federal tax and Social Security do not care which state you live in. They take their share before your state gets a look, which is why the earning figure still exceeds the price here.
How much of this is sales tax?
It lands at about 1.82% at the register, depending on the exact address. Rates move across town lines, so treat it as the working figure rather than the final one.
Where in the country is this cheapest?
New Hampshire is the lightest, and doing this there would save you $425 of earning against Alaska. At the other end, California would cost you $5,824 more.
What does Alaska's ranking on this actually mean?
It means Alaska places 50 when every state we can compute this for is lined up by how much you must earn, most expensive first. It is a ranking of tax structure, not of prices in the shops.
This is a daily cost — does the state matter more or less?
It matters more here than on a one-off purchase. The same wedge is taken at every repeat, so the annual figure carries the state difference daily after daily.
What places Alaska below the national median here?
The state sits below the national median on the combined wedge applied to this outlay — income tax, purchase tax, or both. Required gross income is $23,801, $2,935 under the median; the differential is a function of tax structure, not of local prices, which this model holds constant.
Why is required gross income above the outlay in a state with no income tax?
Federal income tax and FICA are levied irrespective of state of residence, so the gross-up factor has a floor set by the federal marginal rate plus the employee-side payroll tax. Removing the state layer reduces the wedge; it cannot eliminate it. Alaska's requirement is $23,801.
What is the purchase-tax component in Alaska?
The representative combined state-and-local rate is about 1.82%, applied to the taxable outlay. ⚠️ Local sourcing means the effective rate varies by point of sale within Alaska; the figure here is representative, not jurisdiction-specific.
What is the national spread on this purchase?
Against New Hampshire at the light end, Alaska carries $425 of additional gross requirement; against California at the heavy end it is $5,824 lighter. ⚠️ The model holds the pre-tax outlay constant across states, so the spread reflects tax structure alone and not regional price levels.
How is the state ranking on this purchase constructed?
States are ordered DESCENDING by required gross income at a constant pre-tax outlay — first place is the most expensive — and Alaska occupies position 50. ⛔ The ranking is not a cost-of-living measure — regional price variation is deliberately excluded so the tax effect is isolable.
How does recurrence interact with the state differential?
The state differential is multiplicative in the number of occurrences. For a daily outlay the annualised gap equals the per-occurrence gap times the periods per year, which is why recurring categories separate states far more sharply than one-off purchases of the same nominal value.
Keep going
What you must earn to buy it
A $75,000 salary
| Sticker price | $28.00 |
|---|---|
| Sales taxStatewide average | $0.51 |
| Out of pocket | $28.51 |
| Income tax on earning it | $12.01 |
| Hours of work | 1.1 hr |
29.64% of that pay never reaches the purchase.
This example uses the entered price and applicable sales tax. The full calculation above may also include tips.
Show your work
A $75,000 salary
| PriceWhat you typed | $28.00 |
|---|---|
| Sales tax1.82% · Statewide average | $0.51 |
| Out of pocketPrice plus sales tax | $28.51 |
| Federal, next dollarIRS brackets, 2026 | 22% |
| Social Security and MedicareFICA rates, 2026 | 7.65% |
| State, next dollarAK brackets, 2026 | 0% |
| Pay you must earnWalked up your own bracket boundaries | $40.52 |
| Tax on earning itPay needed, less out of pocket | $12.01 |
This example uses the entered price and applicable sales tax. The full calculation above may also include tips.
If the money stayed put
A $75,000 salary
| Spent today | $29 |
|---|---|
| Growth given up | $23 |
| Pay needed to buy it | $41 |
Assumes a 6% annual return that you can edit. This example uses the entered price and applicable sales tax. The full calculation above may also include tips.