Rental car in Wyoming

A suitcase lifted from an open trunk under a concrete parking deck at dawn.

At $75,000 income

$399

Rank among states we cover

50 of 51

vs. national median

-6%

50 of 51 states we can compute a rental car for the same way — that's where Wyoming lands, at the cheap end of the range, at about $399 of gross income on a $75,000 salary. Real money separates the ends of a ranking like this; the middle barely differs at all. This purchase falls outside Wyoming's 5.39% sales tax, leaving income tax as the only state-level cost behind the figure above.

Wyoming taxes a rental car under its own law. That tax sits on top of the normal sales tax, so a rental is taxed twice over. It is already counted in the figure above.

Wyoming levies a dedicated rental-vehicle tax, imposed in addition to state sales tax on the same rental charge. The figure above applies the state's own share; county stadium and convention-center levies, and airport concession recovery fees set by each airport authority, sit on top of it and are not modeled.

Source: Wyoming Dept. of Transportation - Rental Vehicle Agency Compliance, as of 2026-01-01.

South Dakota costs about the same for a rental car

Prices in Wyoming

Everyday prices in Wyoming run 9.15% below the national average. Services, the kind of spending this is, run 5.33% below average, higher than prices overall. That puts it at 37 on the price ladder, where first is the most expensive. A hundred dollars of average American shopping costs $91 $90.85 here.

The cost above uses one national price for a rental car, so these local prices are not in it. See how prices break down in Wyoming.

BEA regional price parity, all items: about 9.15% below the national level, rank 37 by price level, most expensive first. Other-services parity: about 5.33% below. A national-average basket costing one hundred dollars costs $91 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 Wyoming 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

$

Annual income≈ $36/hr
Loading map…
You must earn1.54× sticker
$399

to cover a rental car

Sticker
$260
Markup
54%
Your time
11 hrs
1.4 work days
Total to earn$399select a band
  • Income tax (federal, FICA, state)30%$118
  • Excise tax5%$21
  • Rental car65%$260
  • Income tax (federal, FICA, state)
  • Excise tax
  • Rental car

Data for nerds — sources, confidence and assumptions

Data for nerdssources, confidence, assumptions

Where each number comes from

ComponentAmountConfidence
Item price$260.00Your figureHigh confidence. You supplied this, so it is exact by definition.
Excise tax$20.80StatutoryHigh 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$118.35StatutoryHigh 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: WY
  • Local income tax: none selected

Assumptions

  • We use the rental tax your state actually charges, which is often not the same as its sales tax.
  • A few states — Texas and Nevada among them — charge the rental tax instead of sales tax. We do that too.
  • City and county taxes on rentals are left out, so the real bill can run higher.
  • Airport fees are left out. Every airport sets its own, and no state publishes a number we could use.
  • Fuel, insurance and young-driver charges are left out.
  • Modeled at the state's own rental tax: its dedicated rental surcharge, plus sales tax where sales tax reaches rentals, plus a per-day fee in the seven states that levy one.
  • Texas, Nevada, Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina charge their rental tax in lieu of sales tax rather than on top of it, and are modeled that way.
  • Local rental levies are excluded — county stadium and convention-center taxes, South Dakota's tourism tax, and the surcharge Clark County adds in Las Vegas.
  • Airport concession recovery fees are excluded. Each airport authority sets its own and no state publishes a rate, so there is nothing here to model.
  • Fuel, insurance waivers and young-driver fees are excluded.

Sources

Your position in the tax system

29.65% on the next dollar

Every 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.

Federal22%
FICA7.65%
WY0%
Combined29.65%
Next bracket at
$121,800
$46,800 away
This purchase
29.65%
average rate paid to fund it
Tax to earn it
$118
on top of the price

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

WY is #2 of 51

The 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: $65, from Alabama to Hawaii.

  • $397
  • Wyomingyou$399
  • $462

Choose a state name to compare against somewhere else.

Where every dollar goes

30% never reaches you

The $399.15 you must earn, followed to where it lands. Select a band to isolate it.

  • Federal income tax$87.81
  • FICA (Social Security + Medicare)$30.54
  • Rental car$260.00
  • Excise tax$20.80
To tax $118.35To the purchase $280.80

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.

Kept $7,035To tax $2,965
Take-home now
$61,593
82% of gross
Take-home after
$68,628
+$7,035 a year
Per month
$586
what actually lands

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 Wyoming

Every figure below is computed, not illustrated — this is the actual chain the calculator walks for a single filer earning $75,000 in Wyoming, in the 2026 tax year. Follow it down and you can check our work.

Gross salary$75,000Where every calculation starts.
Less the federal standard deduction−$16,100The 2026 figure for a single filer.
Federally taxable income$58,900What the bracket table is applied to.
Federal income tax−$7,670Top bracket reached: 22.00%.
FICA — Social Security and Medicare−$5,7387.65% up to the wage base, then 1.45% above it.
Wyoming taxable income$75,000This state grants no deduction against this income.
Wyoming income tax−$0Wyoming levies no tax on wage income, so this line is genuinely zero.
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 Wyoming

  • Wages go untaxed by Wyoming 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 rental car in Wyoming ranks 50 — among the cheapest anywhere, at $399 of gross income. Compare Hawaii at the expensive end, which needs $462.
  • South Dakota lands closest to Wyoming here, at $401 — only $1.48 between them. Two states that look nothing alike can still end up a few dollars apart.
  • Wyoming 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.
  • Wyoming 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.
  • At rank 50, a rental car in Wyoming requires $399 of gross income — near the national minimum. Hawaii anchors the opposite end at $462, and the difference is jurisdictional throughout.
  • On this purchase South Dakota is Wyoming's nearest neighbor at $401, separated by $1.48. 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 Wyoming 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 Wyoming?

Less is taken on the way through. Whatever the shelf says, you keep more of what you earn here, so less earning is needed to cover it — $399, which is $24 below the middle state.

Wyoming 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?

State and local layers together come to about 5.39%. It is the visible tax on this purchase, and usually the smaller of the two you pay.

Where in the country is this cheapest?

Alabama sits at the bottom, $2.01 below where you are. Hawaii sits at the top, $63 above. Worth knowing if you are weighing a move.

What does Wyoming's ranking on this actually mean?

50, 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.

What is this figure leaving out?

Something, and the page says what. This category names a cost we do not model, so treat the figure as a floor rather than a full account — it is the part we can source, not the whole bill.

What places Wyoming 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 $399, $24 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. Wyoming's requirement is $399.

What is the purchase-tax component in Wyoming?

The representative combined state-and-local rate is about 5.39%, applied to the taxable outlay. ⚠️ Local sourcing means the effective rate varies by point of sale within Wyoming; the figure here is representative, not jurisdiction-specific.

What is the national spread on this purchase?

Against Alabama at the light end, Wyoming carries $2.01 of additional gross requirement; against Hawaii at the heavy end it is $63 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 Wyoming occupies position 50. ⛔ The ranking is not a cost-of-living measure — regional price variation is deliberately excluded so the tax effect is isolable.

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 $399 is therefore a lower bound on total cost.

Keep going

What you must earn to buy it

A $75,000 salary

$370of pay, before any tax
Sticker price$260
Out of pocket$260
Income tax on earning it$110
Hours of work10 hr

29.65% 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$260
Sales taxNo sales tax applied to this purchase$0.00
Out of pocketPrice plus sales tax$260
Federal, next dollarIRS brackets, 202622%
Social Security and MedicareFICA rates, 20267.65%
State, next dollarWY brackets, 20260%
Pay you must earnWalked up your own bracket boundaries$370
Tax on earning itPay needed, less out of pocket$110

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

$466in 10 years, at that rate
Spent today$260
Growth given up$206
Pay needed to buy it$370

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.