by Art West

Created on: May 21, 2009

As of 2007 Alabama is listed as one of the top 5 tax friendly states in the United States. This is according to an annual report published by the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit fiscal policy research group.

Anywhere in Alabama is affordable, however, I am going to focus on Huntsville. Huntsville is located in northern Alabama. It is in USDA growing zone 7b. What that mean is according to

Health, Mediterranean Palms and Sabal Palms. I mention this simply because I am a fan of palm trees.

Huntsville has a population of about 171,000 people. It is large enough to have some good entertainment opportunities including museums and minor league professional sports teams. You are also only about 83 miles from Birmingham and 111 miles from Nashville, Tennessee. If you want to escape to the beach, you are only 378 miles from Panama City, Florida.

According to bestplaces.net, the overall cost of living in Huntsville is 82 based on a scale that uses 100 as average. That is only the tip of the iceberg. When you break the cost of living down by categories, it looks like this:

Grocery 97.2 Health 90 Housing 57 Utilities 81 Transportation 99 Miscellaneous 99

As you can see, utilities are extremely affordable. What I like to do to get a more accurate reading is to take housing out of the total. When I add Grocery, Health, Utilites, Transportation and Miscellaneous I get 466.2. I then divide that be the number of categories (5) and get 93.24. That gives me a more true reading of the cost of living. I have compared this with other cities and it is pretty low. When you factor in the fact that you can get a house pretty cheaply, you have a very affordable place to live in Huntsville, Alabama.

Property taxes in Alabama are quite low. According to an article from October 2008, which can be found at http://www.landreport.com/2008/10/lowest-property-ta xes-nationwide-alabama/ the average property tax in Alabama is $477 per year!

The state sales tax is 4% (prescription drugs exempt).

Personal income taxes range fro 2% to 5%. Social Security, military, civil service, state/local government and qualified private pensions are exempt. All out-of-state government pensions are tax-exempt if they are defined benefit plans.

as I stated earlier, anywhere in Alabama is affordable, Huntsville seems like a good place to look at if you are considering relocating.

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