Cline: No, New Hampshire Doesn't Have The 4th Highest Lifetime Tax Burden

By Andrew Cline, NH Journal

New Hampshire progressives are gleefully sharing an internet post that ranks New Hampshire fourth in the nation in “lifetime taxes” paid.

The analysis itself is, to use the technical term, bogus. The social media treatment of it is even worse.

On social media, “lifetime taxes paid” very quickly morphed into “lifetime tax burden.” That sleight of hand makes New Hampshire look like a high-tax state.

The truth is exactly the opposite.

The so-called study, done by a company called Self Financial and mapped by the Visual Capitalist website, claims to show that New Hampshire ranks fourth in lifetime taxes paid by its residents. Its methodology shows how it goes wrong in multiple ways.

Dinged by federal income taxes

The first major problem is obvious from even a quick skim of the write-up. The analysis includes federal income taxes.

On average, New Hampshire residents pay more in federal income taxes because incomes here are high relative to the rest of the nation.

The federal income tax is not under New Hampshire’s control, and its rates are the same nationwide. This portion of the analysis tells us nothing about New Hampshire’s tax burden. Because it is based on a measure of average personal income, it tells us only that Granite Staters tend to pay more in federal taxes because incomes here are relatively high.

Inflated property taxes

The second major problem is how the analysis calculates and ranks property tax payments.

The methodology section explains that property tax rankings are based on the median single-family home price in each state as of Dec. 31, 2025. Using that as a baseline, property tax payments are projected forward for the next 45 years.

This sets New Hampshire’s record-high home prices as the baseline, assuming that prices will never stabilize because of future changes in demand or supply but will only hit ever-increasing record highs.

In this analysis, the rise in home prices caused by surging demand during a housing shortage is locked in permanently.

Worse, it measures only the most expensive properties: single-family homes. Excluding condos and townhomes inflates the estimated property tax payments.

The single-family home price used by Self was $542,300, as best we can tell. Using this figure as a baseline, without including condos and townhomes, would skew New Hampshire’s property tax payments higher than they really are.

The Census Bureau’s annual property tax bill measurement includes condominiums and townhomes.

Unrealistic assumptions

The analysis contained other questionable methodological decisions and assumptions.

For example, it assumed that everyone would have a four-year college degree, when less than a quarter of U.S. adults do.

More importantly, the Self analysis assumed that a single individual making the state’s median annual income, as measured by U.S. Census data ($69,187), would own a median-priced home valued at $542,300 — and pay all of the property taxes on that home.

Needless to say, that’s not how life works.

An individual earning $70,000 is not buying a half-million-dollar home on that income alone. Remember, the Self analysis is forward-looking. It doesn’t assume someone bought a home years ago and enjoyed a doubling in its value. It assumes that individuals — not households — are owning and paying property taxes on median-priced single-family homes on one income today and for the next 45 years.

It also isn’t clear what property tax rate was used — residential property or all classes — and whether exemptions and exclusions were factored in.

Whatever formula was used created a significantly higher property tax burden than the commonly used U.S. Census Bureau measure.

The Census Bureau measures median annual property tax bills, including those for condos and townhomes. It ranks New Hampshire No. 2 in the country by this metric, which obviously is affected by the state’s high home values.

The Census Bureau’s formula puts New Hampshire’s median property tax bill at 7.6 times higher than West Virginia’s, the state with the lowest bill.

The Self analysis has New Hampshire’s property tax payment 10 times higher than West Virginia’s. That significant increase goes unexplained but is certainly related to the inflated baseline tax bill and possibly other flawed methodologies used to calculate tax payments.

The Self analysis also included vehicle taxes and assumed that every individual owned a Ford F-Series pickup truck, purchasing five of them in one lifetime. This is the most popular vehicle in the United States, but it’s expensive, and many Granite Staters buy much cheaper vehicles. Ford F-Series trucks are not among the five most popular vehicles in New Hampshire, according to MotorTrend’s 2026 rankings. (The Toyota RAV4 is the most popular vehicle in the state.)

New Hampshire’s actual rankings

At $2,527 per person, New Hampshire has the lowest per capita state tax collections in the country, as the 2026 Tax Foundation rankings show. (The Self analysis did not use this study.)

At 1.62%, New Hampshire’s effective property tax rate — property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value — ranks fifth in the nation, according to the 2026 Tax Foundation rankings. (Self did not use this study.)

A measure that we prefer is the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index because it gives a comprehensive look at overall tax policy, measuring 150 variables within five broad categories: corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales and excise taxes, property and wealth taxes and unemployment insurance. (Self did not use this study, though it did use Tax Foundation studies on personal income taxes and sales taxes.)

All of these taxes accumulate, and many are passed down to individuals even if they don’t show up on one’s direct tax bill.

New Hampshire ranks third in overall state tax competitiveness, meaning we are the third-most competitive state in the nation on total state and local taxes. This high placing comes despite ranking 37th in corporate taxes and 44th in property taxes.

Being this competitive helps attract business investment and new residents, which strengthens the economy, creates jobs and helps create a high overall quality of life for everyone.

Two other measures that are relatively useful come from WalletHub.

One is its return on investment ranking, which measures states by the quality of services and total state and local tax collections. One can surely come up with multiple measures of service quality, but the WalletHub ranking does a pretty good job using proxies for the quality of government services. New Hampshire has ranked No. 1 on this list for 11 consecutive years.

WalletHub also ranks states by total state and local tax burden. It’s a simple metric, adding individual income taxes, sales and excise taxes and property taxes, then dividing them by total personal income. It excludes business taxes and wealth taxes, which it should include. On this simple measure, which looks only at taxes individuals pay directly, New Hampshire ranks 49th. Only Alaska has a lower total state and local tax burden.

Capping property tax growth

New Hampshire does have high property taxes. Conservatives have tried for years to pass local property tax caps that limit the rate at which property taxes can grow. What’s probably the most interesting aspect of this entire hubbub is that the progressives who use the Self analysis to claim that our property taxes are too high are the same people who oppose property tax caps.

As we noted earlier this year, Massachusetts passed a statewide property tax cap in 1980, and that cap has significantly slowed the rate of property tax growth. Massachusetts’ effective property tax rate fell by two-thirds, largely thanks to the property tax cap. But that didn’t cut local tax revenue. Property tax revenue more than doubled, adjusting for inflation and population growth, economist Jared Walczak found in a study this year for the Fiscal Alliance Foundation.

Rhode Island, the only other New England state with a property tax cap, reports that the cap is effective at keeping total local government property tax increases below the maximum level allowed by law.

Tax caps are a proven method for restraining the rate of growth of local property taxes. If New Hampshire wants to lower its overall tax burden, property tax caps would be an easy and effective way to do that.

Andrew Cline is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.