Tax-Free States

The 5 US States With No State Sales Tax

2026-09-19 · 3 min read

There is no national sales tax in the United States. Each state sets its own rate, and in most states cities and counties stack a second local layer on top. Five states, however, charge zero state sales tax — and they are the natural default whenever you need a realistic US address for testing: QA fixtures, form validation, staging data, or privacy-friendly placeholders.

Quick facts: the five states

State	Abbr.	State rate	Local add-on?	ZIP range	Area code(s)
Alaska	AK	0%	Yes — boroughs and cities may levy their own	995xx–999xx	907
Delaware	DE	0%	No	197xx–199xx	302
Montana	MT	0%	Resort districts only, up to 3%	59000–59999	406
New Hampshire	NH	0%	Meals & rooms 8.5% (general goods exempt)	030xx–038xx	603
Oregon	OR	0%	No	97xxx	503 / 541 / 971

Which state for which scenario

Scenario	Pick	Why
Default, least effort	Delaware DE	No state tax, no local tax — rules fit on one page
West-coast user persona	Oregon OR	Geographically believable next to CA/WA; ZIPs start with 97
Clothing / general-goods checkout	New Hampshire NH	General goods exempt (meals and lodging are taxed — irrelevant to goods)
Large batches of random rows	Mix DE and OR	Spreads the data out; avoids a single-state cluster
Only if the persona demands it	Alaska AK	Municipal taxes vary town by town — the highest-maintenance option

The fine print, state by state

Delaware DE — the only "complete" one of the five: no state sales tax and no local sales tax anywhere. It is also the #1 state for US company incorporations, so DE addresses appear constantly in commercial systems and never look out of place.
Oregon OR — the only tax-free state on the West Coast, ZIPs starting with 97. The Portland metro area has dense, realistic street data, which makes it a good fit for personas set in California or Seattle.
Montana MT — general goods are exempt, but resort districts may levy up to 3%. Addresses from ordinary cities like Billings or Missoula steer clear of it entirely.
New Hampshire NH — goods are exempt; meals and lodging carry an 8.5% Meals & Rooms Tax. Perfect for e-commerce form testing, the wrong state for hotel-booking flows.
Alaska AK — state rate 0%, but boroughs and cities can add their own sales tax, so rules vary town by town. Use it only when the scenario genuinely calls for Alaska.

Generate one in 30 seconds

Open the tax-free states generator (the homepage).
Pick a state — say Delaware — and hit generate.
Copy the whole label: street, city, state, and ZIP travel as a set.

Three pitfalls

Local add-ons. Parts of AK and MT have their own small taxes. DE and OR have none anywhere, which is why they are the default.
Partial copying. The most common failure: city copied faithfully, ZIP typed from memory. The four fields are bound together — mixing them breaks validation.
A test address is not a tax shelter. Real purchases are taxed where the buyer actually is. The generator solves "is this a well-formed address", nothing else.

Frequently asked questions

Can I ship something to a generated address?

No. Addresses from this site are test data for form validation and staging environments. Shipments, forwarding, and returns always need a real recipient address.

Do tax-free states make my real purchases cheaper?

No. Sales tax on a real purchase follows where you actually are, not the address you type into a sandbox. The generator is a testing tool, not a tax-avoidance tool.

Which state looks the most ordinary in test data?

Delaware and Oregon. Both are rule-clean and frequent in commercial systems. Addresses from small Alaskan cities are rare and occasionally draw a second look.

Does the State field take the full name or the abbreviation?

Dropdowns usually display the full name (Delaware) and submit the abbreviation (DE). The generator's state switcher shows both, so you can copy either.

→ Generate a tax-free-state test address