Las Vegas to Reno: leftover after tax and rent

On Uprootmap's default profile — one adult, one bedroom, local pay for a registered nurse — leftover after tax and rent is about $2,559 a month in Las Vegas and $2,296 in Reno. That is $263 less leftover in Reno, or about $3,200 a year. The Las Vegas → Reno move page and the Las Vegas vs Reno compare run the same household on both metros so the gap is not a COL percentage.

The SERP query looks like a bargain hunt. The model disagrees. Nevada has no wage income tax in either metro, so the tax line is not the plot. A one-bedroom asking rent is about $1,267 in Las Vegas and $1,556 in Reno, and Reno's wage index is lower, so a nurse who takes the local market paycheck keeps less on both the lease and the paycheck.

Change the inputs and the $263 will move. Remote pay that holds a Las Vegas salary constant makes Reno look better, because you kept the paycheck and only changed the lease. Two adults and three bedrooms will move rent faster than tax. That is the point of the calculator: the query is “Las Vegas to Reno,” the answer is leftover for this household.

IRS county-to-county migration for 2022–2023 counted 1,064 tax returns (about 1,563 people) that left the Las Vegas metro for Reno, with average AGI around $84,000. 921 households went the other way. Those are households that filed in a new county, not moving-company invoices, and AGI is reported income, not leftover. Small cells are omitted; this pair is large enough to publish.

So the search demand is not imaginary. People leave the Strip for the Sierra, or follow a job, or get out of a housing market that is no longer the bargain it was. Leftover is not why 1,064 households moved. Weather, Tahoe, smoke, and a different kind of tourism economy are off-model. The Reno city page and the Las Vegas city page will show you the leftover headline; they will not tell you whether you want to live next to a casino or a lake.

The metros are about 450 road miles apart. On a one-bedroom move the model's typical ranges are roughly $650–$1,200 to rent a truck and $2,050–$3,800 for a full-service crew — ranges, not quotes. You can recoup a cheap truck in a couple of months of leftover if leftover goes up. Here it goes down. The how much leftover do you need guide is the recoup test; this pair fails it on money alone.

That does not make the move wrong. It makes “Reno is cheaper” the wrong sentence. If you still want Reno, you need a reason leftover cannot see, or a household (remote pay, a different job, a partner) that flips the gap. Run it.

A published cost-of-living index will often call Reno and Las Vegas close, or call Reno slightly cheaper on groceries and slightly more expensive on housing, and stop. It will not apply Nevada's (absent) income tax to your paycheck, because indexes do not do tax. It will not use your bedroom count. It will not use a nurse's local wage in each metro.

The leftover vs index guide is the longer version. The short version for this pair: when tax is the same and rent is the same, leftover is a wage story. An index that holds income constant is answering a remote-worker question. Most people searching “Las Vegas to Reno” are not remote by default.

1. Open Moving from Las Vegas to Reno. The H1 is leftover, not a percentage. The IRS block is who already moved.
2. Open the line-by-line compare if you want take-home, rent and the rest of the month in one table.
3. Set your job and salary on the homepage, then reopen those two URLs. The path stays the same; the household lives in the link.
4. If leftover is still worse in Reno and you still want to go, you are moving for something leftover does not price. That is allowed. Write it down so you do not pretend the index agreed with you.

Figures are estimates from the committed model, not quotes. Sources and assumptions live on the methodology page. Nothing here is a recommendation to leave Las Vegas or to sign a lease in Reno.