Oh, you’re in Washington! Yeah, that’s actually my “home”. I was born there and didn’t leave until I was 17. When I was 17, I left (to Phoenix, AZ) and over the years I have lived in 7 different states. But I’ve returned to WA in between almost every out of state move. I last lived in WA in 2017.

At least at that time, almost all food was untaxed. They have some odd thing about anything that contains carbonated water. So soda/pop is taxed but bread, milk, eggs is untaxed. But all of it is at a higher rate than SD. There also doesn’t seem to be any “sin tax” in SD that I’ve noticed. Although to be fair, I haven’t done the math.

I was also buying a home in WA for 15 years and property taxes in WA are much higher than in SD (I don’t have actual figures at hand for WA but the place we sold when we left there was valued at less than the place we have now and the taxes were about the same). Gas was also quite a bit more expensive, as well as liquor and cigs. Registration on vehicles is cheaper here in SD than we we were paying in WA but also, with the lack of inspection requirements, that also makes the overall cost even lower. Although insurance does seem to be a bit higher. From what our agent has told us, that comes down to greater chances of hail and wildlife (hitting a deer on the highway is rather common here) damage chances here.