2026 tax year · cross-border wages
Crossing a state line into or out of Maine
Maine taxes its residents on income earned anywhere, and taxes non-residents on work done inside it. Which return you file depends on which direction you commute.
Maine borders 1 states. All of them work the same way for a commuter, so there is one rule to learn.
Where the work state takes nothing
New Hampshire levies no personal income tax, so there is no return to file there and no credit to claim. But Maine still taxes the wages as a resident. The catch is withholding: an employer in New Hampshire has no state income tax to withhold, so nothing is taken out for Maine either. The liability is real and nothing is being set aside against it, which usually means Maine estimated payments.
What Maine itself takes across a salary range
A single filer, taking the standard deduction. This is the figure every arrangement above is measured against, the tax Maine charges a resident, whether the work happened inside the state or over a line:
| Wages | Maine tax | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $2,805 | 6.23% |
| $70,000 | $4,582 | 6.55% |
| $120,000 | $8,332 | 6.94% |
Coming the other way: living in a no-income-tax state, working in Maine
New Hampshire border Maine and levy no personal income tax of their own. A resident of New Hampshire who works in Maine has the simplest arrangement on this page and the least room to improve it: Maine taxes the wages earned inside it, $4,582 on $70,000, there is no home-state return, and so there is nothing to claim a credit against. Living across a border that charges nothing does not reduce the Maine bill by a cent.
Reciprocity cannot help either, even where Maine has agreements: reciprocity shifts the income to the home state's return, and a state with no income tax has no return to shift it to.
What Maine charges as your home state
Maine taxes income on 3 graduated brackets for 2026, from 5.8% up to 7.5%. Because wages stacks on top of any other income, a second source can push part of it into the next bracket.
State income tax on wages only, 2026 rates. Not tax advice, what this does and doesn't cover.