Chicago, IL to Dallas, TX
On $84,000 in Chicago, with rent at $1,575, you keep $3,702 a month once tax and rent are out. The same job in Dallas typically pays $81,000; at $1,650 rent that leaves $3,797.
Your numbers, not these ones
Where you are
4.95% state income tax
Where you're thinking
No state income tax
Chicago
$7,000 gross
Left each month
$3,702
Dallas
$6,750 gross
Left each month
$3,797
On these numbers
+$96a month
Roughly $1,148a year more, assuming your habits don’t change. To come out level in Dallas at $1,650 rent, the salary works out to about $80,000.
An estimate, not advice. Single filer, standard deduction, 2026federal brackets and 7.65% payroll; state rates are approximate effective rates. Rents are HUD Fair Market Rents for a one-bedroom (FY2026) — the 40th percentile of gross rent, utilities included — and pay is scaled by each metro’s all-occupations mean wage from the BLS (OEWS, May 2025). Both are measured for the whole metro, not your neighbourhood or your job. Your actual position depends on your filing status, deductions, benefits and local taxes. Check real listings and a tax professional before you decide anything.
The difference, taken apart
| What moves | Effect on what you keep each month |
|---|---|
| Gross pay$6,750 against $7,000 a month | −$250 |
| Federal tax and payroll$1,303 against $1,377 | +$74 |
| State income taxnone against $347 | +$347 |
| Rent$1,650 against $1,575 | −$75 |
| Left each month, Dallas against Chicago | +$96 |
Four things move between Chicago and Dallas, and they do not move together. State income tax is the largest of them here: worth $347 a month in your favour.
This is the awkward direction: the job pays less and the rent costs more. $81,000 against $84,000, and $1,650 against $1,575. Whatever is good about Dallas, it is not the arithmetic.
Texas has no state income tax. Illinois takes 4.95%, which on $84,000 is $347 a month, or $4,158 a year. That much arrives whether or not the offer is any good, which is why the no-tax states dominate these searches.
It is also the part people over-read. A state with no income tax funds itself some other way — sales tax, property tax, fees — and none of that is in the figures above. What is above is federal tax, payroll, state income tax and rent.
Those are approximate effective rates for a single filer on a middle income in 2026, not top brackets, and they ignore city and county taxes. Chicago and Dallas may both charge you something local that is not counted here.
Rent is close to a wash: $1,650 in Dallas against $1,575 in Chicago. Housing is usually the whole story on a move like this and here it is not, which means the answer turns on tax and on what the job pays.
Both figures are HUD Fair Market Rents for a one-bedroom, FY2026 — the 40th percentile of gross rent with utilities in it, so four in ten one-bedrooms in each metro go for less. They are measured across the whole metro, which means a suburb carries its metro's number. A search on any listings site for the neighbourhoods you would actually live in will still beat them, and it takes ten minutes.
The same work pays about 4% less in Dallas: $81,000 against $84,000. That is not a negotiating failure, it is the local market — and it is the number most people leave out when they picture the move, because rent is easy to look up and salary bands are not.
Both figures are bands, not offers: a salary scaled by each metro's all-occupations mean wage from the BLS, May 2025. That measures every job in the metro rather than yours, so it tells you what the local market pays in general, not what you would be offered. The $84,000 this page opens on is a typical salary for Chicago and it is almost certainly not yours — put your own into the calculator above and the whole comparison re-runs on it.
It is about 800 miles between them. Nothing above counts what the move itself costs: the truck, the deposit, the overlap in rent, the weeks between the last paycheque and the first one.
Nor does it count sales tax, property tax, car insurance, utilities, childcare or health cover, all of which move between Illinois and Texas. The figures here are federal tax, payroll, state income tax and rent — the four that decide most of it, and the four that can be computed rather than guessed.
Dallas needs to pay $80,000 a year for you to come out exactly level, and the typical offer is $81,000. On the money this is a coin toss, which is worth knowing — it means you get to decide it on everything else.
Anything above $80,000 is the move paying for itself. Below it, you are buying something else with the difference, and it is worth being able to name what.
The floor
$80,000a year
What Dallas has to pay for you to break even. The typical $81,000 already clears it by $1,000; anything below it is a pay cut wearing a nicer skyline.
An estimate, not advice. Single filer, standard deduction, 2026 federal brackets and 7.65% payroll; state rates are approximate effective rates and rents are typical one-bedroom asking prices. Salary bands are scaled from a national baseline by what the same job tends to pay in each metro. Your actual position depends on your filing status, deductions, benefits and local taxes. Check real listings and a tax professional before you decide anything.