Phone plan in Alaska
At $75,000 income
$9,794
Rank among states we cover
43 of 51
vs. national median
-6%
At about $9,794 of gross income on a $75,000 salary, a phone plan in Alaska runs 6% below the national median — 43 of 51 states this can be computed for. That's not a rounding difference: vary the price, the filing status or the county, and Alaska still lands below the middle of the pack. Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming reach exactly the same figure — on this category, nothing in the calculation separates them. This purchase falls outside Alaska's 1.82% sales tax, leaving income tax as the only state-level cost behind the figure above.
Montana costs about the same for a phone plan
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 phone plan, 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
The 14.25% state/local wireless layer is a NATIONAL AVERAGE, not your state's rate. Real rates range from under 2% to over 25% depending on the state and locality, which is a larger swing than anything else on this page. The federal USF surcharge genuinely is national.
The income tax in this figure is still computed from Alaska and your filing status.
to cover a phone plan
$6,890 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%$2,904
- Excise tax15%$1,490
- Phone plan55%$5,400
- Income tax (federal, FICA, state)
- Excise tax
- Phone plan
Data for nerds — sources, confidence and assumptions
Data for nerdssources, confidence, assumptions
Where each number comes from
| Component | Amount | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Item price | $5,400.00 | Your figureHigh confidence. You supplied this, so it is exact by definition. |
| Excise tax | $1,490.40 | StatutoryHigh confidence. This number is the law — federal, FICA and state tax rates are published rates, so the only real risk is staleness. |
| Income tax to earn it | $2,904.06 | 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 - Local income tax: none selected
Assumptions
- We use the national average phone tax rate (about 27.6%), not your own state's. Real rates run from about 16.82% in Idaho up to about 38.32% in Illinois.
- The federal part of that rate is itself an average. The FCC resets its rate every three months, so the exact charge on your bill shifts from quarter to quarter.
- The invested-instead comparison assumes you keep paying the same monthly bill for however many years you choose, and that the money would have been invested at the long-run market return instead.
- Uses the national average combined wireless tax/fee rate (about 27.6%) rather than your specific state — actual combined rates range from about 16.82% (Idaho) to about 38.32% (Illinois).
- The federal Universal Service Fund component is itself a national average of an effective rate (a safe-harbor percentage of the bill × the FCC's quarterly contribution factor) — real carrier line-items vary quarter to quarter as the FCC resets that factor.
- The compounding comparison assumes the money is a fixed monthly commitment held for the years you specify, invested at the long-run market return if it weren't spent — the same lens as the coffee-habit category.
Sources
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 #1 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: $1,419, from Alaska to California.
- Alaskayou$9,794
- $11,213
Choose a state name to compare against somewhere else.
Where every dollar goes
30% never reaches youThe $9,794.46 you must earn, followed to where it lands. Select a band to isolate it.
- Federal income tax$2,154.78
- FICA (Social Security + Medicare)$749.28
- Phone plan$5,400.00
- Excise tax$1,490.40
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
- Wages go untaxed by Alaska itself. The state rate is 0%. Zero, not just cheap. Everything else on this page follows from that. On rate it ranks 43 nationally.
- A phone plan in Alaska takes $9,794 of gross income, rank 43. The full range spans $1,419: Alaska at $9,794 on one side, California at $11,213 on the other.
- Montana lands closest to Alaska here, at $10,650 — only $855 between them. Two states that look nothing alike can still end up a few dollars apart.
- Alaska taxes the till, not the pay stub. Sales tax applies; income tax does not. Whether that helps you depends on how much of what you earn you actually spend.
- Alaska does not tax wage income at the state level: 0% effective at the representative salary, rank 43 nationally. Reading that as "a very low rate" understates it — a zero term removes the layer from the gross-up rather than shrinking it, which is what drives the gap against comparably-priced wage-taxing states.
- A phone plan in Alaska requires $9,794 of gross income, ranking 43. Across all states the requirement varies by $1,419, bounded by Alaska at $9,794 and California at $11,213.
- On this purchase Montana is Alaska's nearest neighbor at $10,650, separated by $855. The convergence is a property of the composed stack rather than of similar tax policy — offsetting income and sales treatments frequently produce near-identical totals.
- Collection in Alaska rests on consumption: a general sales tax with no individual income tax. The distributional effect varies with the share of income spent rather than saved, so the structure is regressive relative to an income tax at the same aggregate yield.
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.
- 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.
- 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?
The saving is in the earning, not the price tag. Alaska leaves more of your pay intact, which is why this lands at $9,794, saving $669 against the median state.
Alaska has no income tax, so why do I still need to earn this much?
Skipping the state layer helps, and it is the reason this state ranks where it does. But the two biggest deductions on almost every paycheck are federal, and those follow you across every border.
How much of this is sales tax?
State and local layers together come to about 1.82%. It is the visible tax on this purchase, and usually the smaller of the two you pay.
Is Alaska really the extreme case for this?
This is an end of the spread, not a typical result. Alaska needs $9,794, and that figure is the boundary rather than a point inside the range.
What does Alaska's ranking on this actually mean?
43, counting down from the most expensive. Worth saying plainly: this ranks what the tax system does to the purchase, not what the purchase costs in a local shop.
This is a monthly 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 monthly after monthly.
What is this figure leaving out?
There is a declared gap. Rather than fold in a guess, the page names what is missing and leaves it out of the arithmetic, which keeps the number defensible even though it is incomplete.
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 $9,794, $669 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 $9,794.
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.
How far is Alaska from the opposite end of the national range?
Alaska occupies a terminal position in the national distribution at $9,794 of required gross income. ⚠️ The pre-tax outlay is held constant across states, so this is an extreme of tax treatment and not of local prices.
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 43. ⛔ 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 monthly 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.
What falls outside the model for this category?
The category declaration records at least one component outside the model's scope. It is excluded from the computation rather than estimated, in line with the project's rule against unsourced figures; the reported requirement of $9,794 is therefore a lower bound on total cost.
Keep going
What you must earn to buy it
A $75,000 salary
| Sticker price | $90.00 |
|---|---|
| Out of pocket | $90.00 |
| Income tax on earning it | $37.92 |
| Hours of work | 3.5 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 excise taxes.
Show your work
A $75,000 salary
| PriceWhat you typed | $90.00 |
|---|---|
| Sales taxNo sales tax applied to this purchase | $0.00 |
| Out of pocketPrice plus sales tax | $90.00 |
| 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 | $128 |
| Tax on earning itPay needed, less out of pocket | $37.92 |
This example uses the entered price and applicable sales tax. The full calculation above may also include excise taxes.
If the money stayed put
A $75,000 salary
| Spent today | $90 |
|---|---|
| Growth given up | $71 |
| Pay needed to buy it | $128 |
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 excise taxes.