Things I wont miss ...

[MtnLion512]

While we're singing the praises of Delaware, let's not leave out that it's home to the most dangerous city in the U.S.! High violent crime and # of sex offenders, according to multiple sources.

Meanwhile Texas' large cities are some of the safest in the country.

[BobTex]

Friendlier people in Delaware , that's a laugher.

[doctorjef]

Inner city Wilmington does have a statistically high crime rate, but this is because most of the city proper is unfortunately a poverty area. The City of Wilmington hasn't annexed any territory since just after the Civil War. As a result, no more than 70,000 people live within the city limits of a quite small area, while a generally more advantaged population almost ten times that size live in a much larger area spanning out from the city, and the suburbs are fairly crime free, occasional localised outbreaks of burglaries being the chief sort of crime in the burbs.

Most of Delaware is small town and much of it rural and agricultural -- only the very top of the state is substantially urban/densely suburbanised. Even in the burbs up in the northern tipy-top of the state, where I live, the culture is pretty folksy. The state is small enough and goes back far enough, with surprisingly little outward migration (more people move in than move out) that a sizeable percentage of the inhabitants are related by marriage, and even when this is not the case one often encounters situations in meeting people where you get the sense that you are never more than one or two degrees away from someone you know.

The culture at the local taverns and restaurant-bars is a lot friendlier than anything I ever encountered in urban Texas. We always eat at the bar anywhere we go here and people are almost always eager to start conversations. I never found this to be the case anywhere in Texas that we have lived. Further, when we moved back here from England, my partner commented, "People here sure are wavey", in reference to people in the neighborhood waving to you as you drove down the street.

[Chimuelojones]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

Just sayin' -- some of the OP's premises are misinformed, as are some of you guys' self-congratulatory beliefs about life in the Lone Star State.

Please don't move here, but you are most welcome to visit for the tax-free shopping, the great beaches, and the early American history.

How can the OP's perception be "misinformed"? The OP is making an assessment [self]. She is not speaking in any official capacity nor as an authority on everything Texas.

[doctorjef]

Originally Posted by TX75007

Uh huh. Here is DE's income tax rates.

Delaware Income Tax Brackets 2013

Nearly 7% on people making 60K plus.

A family of two in DFW making 150K would pay 12K in income taxes in DE. On top of 2K in property taxes.

Vs paying no income tax in TX and paying 5K property tax. (See Big G's post)

14K in DE vs 5.5K in TX.

True that DE has no sales tax, but I itemize my sales tax in TX for my Federal 1040 and last year it was around 2K.

So, the big totals are 14K for DE and 7.5K for TX.

TX costs 1/2 that of DE.

We can argue about this subject until the cows come home, but I can tell you that my tax burden here is lower than in Texas (where I still pay an enormous local tax bill in Denton County on natural gas underground mineral rights that I own and which are in active production). My taxes are complicated enough that I have to use a CPA (who is in Denton, but I inherited him from my mother and have been using him for years). I thus don't have a first-hand knowledge of how state and federal income taxes interact, though you of course get a federal income tax deduction for state income taxes payed, but in this state there is also some sort of state deduction for federal tax. Apart from this, the property taxes are shockingly low here, especially outside of municipalities (and strangely there is a practice in Delaware of leaving most suburbs and small communities unincorporated and directly under county jurisdiction, rather than annexing them to larger cities/towns or incorporating them as towns in their own right).

The state makes a lot of its revenue from incorporation fees on major, multi-national corporations, and on one-off real estate transfer fees. Despite the amount of Fortune 500 legal matters dealt with here, the cases at law are heard at the Court of Chancery, which is located on the square in the smallest of the three county seats, Georgetown, which has a population of only a few thousand and is in the sticks, in the middle of farm country.

There is one toll road in the state itself and a one way trip all the way downstate costs us two bucks, but we only have reason to do that a handful of times a year when we go down to the beach or to Dover. The tolls can be avoided entirely if one wants to take other north-south routes.

I've already addressed how much less my professional license costs here than in Texas, about one quarter of the amount I pay in Texas to maintain it. Partly because Delaware doesn't attach extra fees to everything, i.e. hidden taxes.

[Gerania]

Originally Posted by MtnLion512

While we're singing the praises of Delaware, let's not leave out that it's home to the most dangerous city in the U.S.! High violent crime and # of sex offenders, according to multiple sources.

Meanwhile Texas' large cities are some of the safest in the country.

Detroit moved?