Which US states have no sales tax? The five tax-free states
2025-01-18 · US Address Generator
Getting the concept straight
The United States has no national VAT. Sales tax is a state-level levy, and counties and cities may stack a local rate on top. So a "tax-free state" means a state with no state-level sales tax — not a place where nothing you buy is taxed.
Five states have no state sales tax: Alaska (AK), Delaware (DE), Montana (MT), New Hampshire (NH) and Oregon (OR). Oregon goes further and has essentially no local sales tax either, making it the cleanest zero-sales-tax jurisdiction in the country.
The five states are not equivalent
Plenty of articles lump all five together as tax havens. Taken one at a time:
- Oregon (OR): no state and virtually no local sales tax. Tax-free shopping is local common sense, and Portland draws out-of-staters for big-ticket items.
- Delaware (DE): no state sales tax and no local sales tax. It also has corporate-registration advantages, though e-commerce risk engines watch Wilmington-area addresses closely.
- Montana (MT): no state sales tax, but some tourist towns levy a resort tax.
- New Hampshire (NH): no state sales tax, though meals and rooms carry their own tax.
- Alaska (AK): no state sales tax, but many municipalities levy their own — some at meaningful rates. Treating AK as zero-tax is the most common mistake.
If the goal is testing a genuinely zero-tax checkout total, Oregon and Delaware are the only clean options at both levels.
Where ZIP prefixes come in
- OR: 970xx–979xx
- DE: 197xx–199xx
- MT: 590xx–599xx
- NH: 030xx–038xx
- AK: 995xx–999xx
The prefix must match the state. Pair "Oregon" with a 100xx ZIP and most platforms will normalize the state back to New York, invalidating the address.
What these addresses are actually for
- Testing checkout price logic across tax regimes to see whether the tax branch only fires in certain states.
- Exercising zero-tax handling, where implementations often divide by zero or return an empty tax field.
- Giving demos, screenshots and tutorials a plausible shipping address that keeps tax out of the way.
Three things people overlook
- Cancellations are normal. Nike, Apple and others keep blocklists of known forwarding-warehouse ZIPs and some Portland codes sit near the top. A correctly formatted address can still be cancelled — that is risk control, not formatting.
- Billing and shipping addresses are different problems. Card AVS compares against the address on file with the issuer; where you ship to is irrelevant to it.
- Other taxes still exist. Property tax, franchise tax and local surcharges remain — no sales tax does not mean a low cost of living.
Generate a comparison set
The tax-free address generator covers all five states with prefixes matched to each, so you can pull Oregon, Delaware and California sets to drive your checkout tax branches. To size the difference first, use the tax-free savings calculator.