Living in Minnesota, working in North Dakota
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Minnesota
$3,237
on a seventy-thousand wage
North Dakota would want
$106
The agreement is worth
$0
in money — the gain is one return, not two
File this
NDW-R
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Between Minnesota and North Dakota the arithmetic is a wash. A seventy-thousand-dollar wage owes $3,237 at home against $106 in North Dakota, and the home figure is the bigger of the two. So your total does not move. One return instead of two, and correct withholding from day one — that is what you actually get.
- It does not stay the same as you earn more. On forty-five thousand dollars the Minnesota bill is $1,589; on a hundred thousand it is $5,277. North Dakota would have charged $691 at that higher wage. The two states pull apart as the salary rises, which is why this matters more to a senior job than a starter one.
- One piece of paper stands between you and this. Your employer needs the North Dakota exemption certificate from you, usually once a year. Without it they must keep withholding North Dakota tax from a Minnesota resident. You would then be filing a return there after all.
- This pairing yields no reduction in total liability — $3,237 at home against $106 in North Dakota on seventy thousand dollars — because the home state's larger charge would have fully absorbed a credit for the work state's tax. ⭐ What the agreement removes is the nonresident return and the year-long over-withholding that precedes its refund, a cash-flow effect rather than a liability one.
- The differential is income-dependent rather than fixed. Minnesota's liability runs $1,589 at forty-five thousand dollars and $5,277 at one hundred thousand, against $691 in North Dakota at the upper figure. Where one state applies a flat rate and the other a graduated schedule the gap widens or narrows monotonically with income, so a single-salary comparison understates how much the pairing matters across a career.
- The benefit is conditional on filing the exemption certificate with the employer, typically renewed annually. ⚠️ Employer withholding defaults to the work state in its absence, irrespective of eligibility, and the remedy is a nonresident return in North Dakota. The practical failure mode is therefore not ineligibility but non-election — the agreement exists and the commuter simply never claims it.
What lands in your account
A $75,000 salary
Filing as
Paid
$2,231per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $58,016 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $16,984 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.65% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Minnesota against North Dakota
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
+$10,361a year in North Dakota, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Minnesota | North Dakota |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,016 | $61,389 |
| Worth after local prices | $58,949 | $69,310 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.65% | 18.15% |
| State sales tax | 6.88% | 5% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | Yes | No |
| Property tax rate | 1.02% | 0.99% |
| Price level | 98.4 | 88.6 |
| Housing prices | 90.6 | 69.4 |
| Fuel tax | 32.6¢ | 23¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $3.04 | $0.44 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Minnesota, Statewide average; North Dakota, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$62,268in North Dakota, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $70,068 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$12,732 |
| Prices in North Dakota | 89 vs 98 |
State taxes and state price levels only. No city tax, and no housing market.
What each state would charge, across the ladder
Reference wages for a single filer, not a claim about anyone's salary. The last column is the difference the agreement actually removes — which is the gap between the two states, not North Dakota's whole charge.
| Wage | Minnesota charges | North Dakota would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,589 | $0 | $0 |
| $70,000 | $3,237 | $106 | $0 |
| $100,000 | $5,277 | $691 | $0 |
What this page cannot tell you
- This covers wages from a job. It does not cover self-employment, rent or investment income — those follow the ordinary rules for North Dakota.
- ⚠️ And it is a deal between two states. City and county taxes are not part of it, and several of these states have them.
- Every agreement in this dataset applies to wages and salaries only. Business, rental, gain and investment income sourced to North Dakota remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a North Dakota return notwithstanding the agreement.
- ⚠️ Reciprocity binds the state layer only and commonly does NOT extend to municipal or county income taxes — Pennsylvania's local earned income tax is the standard example, remaining payable at the place of employment despite the state-level agreement. Local liabilities are excluded from every figure on this page.