What does Maine cost?

Line 1 · Out of every paycheck

Taxes on your pay: $19,184

On $100,000 a year, filing jointly, Maine's 2026 income tax comes to about $3,394. You're $71,750 of taxable income below Maine's top rate of 7.15 percent. The paid-leave premium, new since 2025, takes up to $500 more.

Washington takes $7,640 in income tax and $7,650 for Social Security and Medicare. That's not Augusta's doing, but it's your bill, so it's on the receipt. All together, about 19 cents of every dollar you earn is gone before you spend any of it.

Sources: Maine Revenue Services, 2026 income tax rates; 26 M.R.S. §850-F, paid family and medical leave premiums; IRS, Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (2026 tax rate tables and standard deduction); Social Security Administration, contribution and benefit base (2026: $184,500); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Maine, 2021 annual averages; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Maine, 2025 annual averages; 26 M.R.S. §664, minimum wage, with annual adjustment; Maine Department of Labor, unemployment contribution rates for 2021 (briefing to the Legislature, January 2021); Maine Department of Labor, unemployment contribution rates for 2026 (November 5, 2025); IRS Publication 15 (2026), Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment

Line 2 · Where you live and work

Buying the typical home: up $17,061 a year

The typical home in Portland is worth about $558,568. With 20 percent down, a 30-year mortgage at August's average rate of 6.67 percent costs about $2,874 a month. In August 2021 the typical home was $439,261 and the rate was 2.84 percent: about $1,452 a month. Rates are set in Washington and on Wall Street. Prices climb when there aren't enough homes, and that part is Maine's to fix. Build more homes

Then the property tax: about $6,813 a year on the median home in Portland, up from $4,417 in 2021. Portland revalued in 2025: home values rose a median 43 percent, and part of the tax shifted from businesses onto homes. The city's total property tax levy went from $190 million in 2021 to $227 million in 2024, the latest year the state has published.

Sources: Zillow Home Value Index, cities (typical home value, smoothed and seasonally adjusted), August 2021 and August 2026; Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate, weekly history; Maine Revenue Services, Municipal Valuation Return statistical summary, 2021; City of Portland, fiscal 2027 tax rate; Portland Press Herald, July 12, 2021 (median home value after revaluation); Portland Press Herald, August 28, 2025 (2025 revaluation); 36 M.R.S. §691, business equipment tax exemption; 36 M.R.S. §6652, business equipment tax reimbursement

Line 3 · Water, sewer, and stormwater

Water and sewer: $1,705 a year, up 17 percent

The Portland Water District's rates for a typical home rose 28 percent. The city's sewer rate, billed with the water, went from $11.80 to $13.50 per hundred cubic feet. Owners also pay the city's stormwater fee, $7.75 a month for a typical lot, up from $7.00.

Sources: Portland Water District, rates (water, and sewer billed for member towns), 2026; Portland Water District, water tariffs, 2026; Portland Water District, rates as of September 2021 (archived); City of Portland, stormwater service charge

Line 4 · To keep the lights on

Electricity: $1,953 a year

A typical Central Maine Power home, using 550 kilowatt-hours a month, pays about $163 a month on average this year, up from about $91 in 2021. Most of that is the power itself, priced by the New England market, and the poles and wires, which state and federal regulators set.

One piece is Augusta's own choice. The “stranded cost” line is where the state recovers the cost of net energy billing, the solar program the Legislature expanded in 2019, along with some long-term power contracts. On a typical bill it's now about $9 a month, up from next to nothing in 2021. The state's own Public Advocate put the program's extra cost to Maine electricity customers at more than $235 million a year, before a 2025 law trimmed it.

Sources: Central Maine Power, Bundled Rate A and Typical Bills, Maine PUC Docket 2026-00011 (June 2026); Central Maine Power, August 2021 price change compliance filing, Maine PUC Docket 2021-00036 (July 16, 2021); Maine Public Utilities Commission, residential electricity rates as of July 1, 2026; Maine Public Utilities Commission, 2025 Annual Report; Maine Office of the Public Advocate, LD 1777 information sheet, June 2025; Maine Legislature, LD 1711 (Public Law 2019, chapter 478), net energy billing; Maine Public Utilities Commission, electricity delivery rates (CMP Small General Service; Versant B-1)

Line 5 · To stay warm and get around

Heating oil: $1,658 a winter

About half of Maine homes heat with oil, more than any other state. A home that does burns about 445 gallons a winter. At last winter's average price, 3.73 a gallon, that's about $1,658. In the winter of 2020 and 2021, a pandemic low, it was about $971. On September 21, 2026, the state's survey found a record 6.02.

That's the world oil market, not Augusta, and we won't pretend otherwise. The state's part is the gas tax: 30 cents a gallon, unchanged since 2011, about $249 a year for the average household.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, house heating fuel (B25040), Maine; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Maine, fuel oil use; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Maine weekly residential heating oil price (W_EPD2F_PRS_SME_DPG), October to March averages; Maine Department of Energy Resources, weekly heating fuel price survey, September 21, 2026; Maine Revenue Services, fuel tax rates; Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics 2024, table VM-1

Line 6 · At the register

Sales and excise taxes: about $2,668

Maine Revenue Services figures that a household at your income pays about 2.7 percent of it in sales and excise taxes. Groceries and heating fuel are exempt. A lot of everyday things aren't:

• Candy5.5%
• Soda5.5%
• Bottled water and bagged ice5.5%
• Chips, pretzels, crackers5.5%
• Salsa and hummus5.5%
• Granola bars and trail mix5.5%
• Coffee to go8%
• Rotisserie chicken8%
• One bagel from a bagel shop (six are tax-free)8%
• Toilet paper5.5%
• Soap and toothpaste5.5%
• Diapers5.5%
• Pet food5.5%
• Cold medicine5.5%
• Clothes and shoes5.5%
• The newspaper5.5%
• Streaming, new in 20265.5%
• Electricity past 750 kWh a month5.5%
• Propane for the grill5.5%
• Seeds for the garden5.5%
• A used car from a neighbor5.5%
• Online orders, collected at checkout since 20195.5%
• A hotel room9%
• A rental car10%

Sources: Maine Revenue Services, Maine State Tax Expenditure Report 2026-2027, Appendix E, Table 3 (tax year 2023); 36 M.R.S. §1752, definitions; 36 M.R.S. §1760, exemptions; 36 M.R.S. §1811, rates; MRS Instructional Bulletin 12, retailers of food products (December 2025); MRS Instructional Bulletin 27, prepared food; MRS Instructional Bulletin 41, medicines (August 2026); MRS General Information Bulletin 115, October 2025 (streaming)

Line 7 · Augusta's budget

$4,241 for every Mainer, every year

That's what Augusta's General Fund spends a year for each person in Maine in 2026 and 2027, up from $2,868 in 2020 and 2021: 48 percent more, while prices rose about a quarter. It only comes back down if someone asks what each line accomplished. Where the money goes

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. Census Bureau, state population estimates (2018 intercensal; Vintage 2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers (series CUUR0000SA0)

The total

It doesn't have to cost this much.

Your household's bill comes to about $68,715 a year, up $21,754 since 2021 on the lines we can compare. The shop's comes to $273,650, up $40,098. Some of that is the market. Some of it is policy: the paid-leave premium, the charges added to the electric bill, the town's rates and the tax on top. Policy can change.

Build more homes, and rents stop climbing so fast. Move the top tax rate off the middle class. Stop adding charges to the electric bill. Hold Augusta's budget, and every town's, to what it can show it accomplished.