Fiscal responsibility
Spend it like it's ours.It is.
High taxes are not the only thing on Maine voters' minds, and we won't pretend they are. In Pan Atlantic Research's December 2025 poll, 33 percent of likely voters named high taxes among the three most important issues facing the state. Cost of living was named more often. The question for Augusta is still the same: what did the dollar do?
Of likely voters who named high taxes among the three most important issues facing Maine. The same poll's top mention was the cost of living. This is a top-three share, not a claim that taxes outranked everything else.
The tool adds up a household's taxes, housing, water, power, and heat, and a small business's bill beside it, each line next to 2021. It runs on your device. Nothing you enter is sent or saved. The full page has both receipts and every source.
Source: Pan Atlantic Research, 67th Omnibus Poll, November 29 to December 7, 2025 (820 likely voters)
Your Bill
Your Maine bill is up $21,754 a year since 2021.
That's someone in Portland earning $100,000 and buying the typical home today: taxes on pay, the mortgage and the property tax, water and sewer, power and heat, every line beside what it was in 2021. Make it yours.
And the Main Street shop down the street? Its year costs $40,098 more, too.
See both receipts, with every source
Estimates for 2026 from published rates and prices: wages alone, standard deductions, no credits except the one-time payment. Every number is sourced on the full bill.
YOUR MAINE BILL
2026 · Portland · owning
FROM YOUR PAYCHECK
Maine income tax$5,129
top rate on your next dollar: 7.15%
Paid-leave premium$500
new since 2025
Federal income tax$13,170
top rate on your next dollar: 22%
Social Security, Medicare$7,650
WHERE YOU LIVE
Mortgage, typical home$34,484
was $17,424 in 2021 · ▲ 98%
bought today: $558,568 at 6.67%
Property tax$6,813
was $4,417 in 2021 · ▲ 54%
the median home
WATER AND SEWER
Water$385
was $301 in 2021 · ▲ 28%
Sewer$1,134
was $991 in 2021 · ▲ 14%
Stormwater fee$186
was $168 in 2021 · ▲ 11%
POWER AND HEAT
Electricity$1,844
was $1,085 in 2021 · ▲ 70%
Central Maine Power, 550 kWh a month
Stranded-cost charge$110
was $4 in 2021 · ▲ +$105
carries net energy billing
Heating oil, a winter$1,658
was $971 in 2020-21 · ▲ 71%
if you heat with oil
State gas tax$249
was $249 in 2021 · no change
30¢ a gallon since 2011
AT THE REGISTER
Sales and excise taxes$2,668
about 2.7% of income
Augusta spends per Mainer$4,241
was $2,868 in 2020-21 · ▲ 48%
To Augusta$8,655
To your town$8,519
To Washington$20,820
Home, power, heat$37,986
TOTAL$75,980
Up since 2021+$21,754
on the lines we can compare
THANK YOU FOR LIVING IN MAINE
The income tax
The top rate isn't a tax on the rich.
Maine's top rate. For a single filer it starts at $64,850 of taxable income, about $86,000 in pay; for a married couple, $129,750 of taxable income.
The lowest rate, on a single filer's first $27,400 of taxable income.
A single nurse or electrician earning about $86,000 pays 7.15 percent on the next dollar.
In 2026 Augusta also added a 2 percent surcharge on taxable income over $1 million for a single filer. It doesn't touch an average family. The 7.15 percent rate does.
The paycheck premium
A new line on every paycheck.
The paid family and medical leave premium on wages, since January 1, 2025. An employer may take up to half of it from each paycheck.
How long the program collected before it paid its first benefit, on May 1, 2026. It was built to collect first.
Source: Maine Department of Labor
The budget
Faster than prices.
Augusta's General Fund for 2026 and 2027, with this year's supplemental budget. For 2018 and 2019 it was $7.2 billion.
In dollars. Prices rose about a third over the same stretch, so after inflation the General Fund is up about a quarter, and about a fifth for every Mainer.
How far next year's spending runs past Maine's own spending limit ($159 million this year). The Legislature suspended the limit to pass it.
Some of that is what voters asked for at the ballot box, like the state paying 55 percent of school costs, which they required in 2004. Some of it went back to towns to hold down property taxes: revenue sharing grew from $74 million a year to about $280 million. And some of it is neither. Before any line grows again, someone should have to say what it accomplished.
Sources: Office of Fiscal and Program Review, General Fund status with the 2026 supplemental budget, August 2026; Office of Fiscal and Program Review, ten-year history of General Fund appropriations; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers (series CUUR0000SA0); U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates (2018 intercensal; Vintage 2025); Maine State Treasurer, municipal revenue sharing, FY2019 and FY2025
The sales tax, the comparison with New Hampshire, and the rest of the taxes page
What we'd do
Common sense with the public's money.
Move the top rate off the middle class.
The 7.15 percent rate should start well above what a nurse or an electrician earns.
A real spending limit.
General Fund growth no faster than inflation plus population, unless two-thirds of the Legislature votes to go past it.
Show the results.
Every large program reports each year what it accomplished, in numbers, before its budget grows.
Give back what's left over.
When revenue comes in above the budget, return it to the people who paid it.
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