Casual readers of this site know how we feel about retirees obsessing over taxes when it comes time to consider places to live: Taxes are just one component of cost of living. In some cases, it is more expensive to live in a no-income tax state like Florida than in a state with income taxes, like one of the Carolinas. Those worried about fitting their budget to a new location should look at overall costs of living, not simply at taxes.
The costs to maintain a car, including taxes and fees, support our point. It turns out that some states we associate correctly with higher taxes overall actually are reasonable places to own and maintain a car; and some low-tax states are expensive places to own a car. Bankrate.com,
Georgia tops the list as the state with the highest car costs, according to Bankrate, with an average annual cost of $4,233 per car, or $8,466 for two cars (before any insurance discounts for multiple cars). Taxes and fees seem to be the culprit, the highest in the nation at an average of $1,952 per car, but gasoline costs are up there too. The only other southeastern state on the top 10 list for highest car costs is Virginia, at #9, and with an annual cost of $3,622 per car. Other southeastern states and their rankings and annual costs are listed below.
The Landings at Skidaway Island is just 20 minutes from downtown Savannah, making excursions in a car less costly than in more remote areas.
You might think that high cost, high tax states like New York and Connecticut would be expensive places to operate a car, but they actually rank at #20 ($3,315) and #14 ($3,485), respectively, on the highest cost list. Pennsylvania, at only $2,764, is 7th from the bottom of the list; Oregon, at the bottom, costs just $2,204 to own and operate a car, mostly because annual registration and other fees in Oregon are just $157, compared with $1,952 in Georgia. (The national average is $1,058 for annual fees, and $3,201 for total costs of car ownership.)
