Living in Washington, D.C..

SettleMetric tax engine over official 2026 federal rules (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32; IRS self-employment tax; SSA 2026 contribution base) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Jan 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Best eligible scheme us-sole-proprietor-federal at €60,000 = $68,394 (ECB 1.1399 USD/EUR, 2026-07-02) with 10% expenses. Net profit $61,554.60; self-employment tax 15.3% on 92.35% of it = $8,697.38; half deducted, giving AGI $57,205.91; less the $16,100 standard deduction and a §199A deduction of $8,221.18 leaves taxable income $32,884.73, taxed $3,698.17. Total levies $12,395.55 / $68,394 = 18.1%. This is federal tax only, which is the whole story just in the nine states that levy no income tax on earned income.

Notes

The single number hides the widest internal spread of any country in this dataset. The same freelancer pays 18.1% in Texas or Florida, 20.5% in California (us-sole-proprietor-california) and 24.4% in New York City (us-sole-proprietor-new-york-city), where state and city income taxes stack on the federal one. Read this figure as the floor available to someone free to choose their state, not as a national average. It also excludes the self-employed health-insurance deduction and retirement contributions, both of which US freelancers use heavily and both of which would lower it.

Executive Order 14224 of 1 March 2025 — Designating English as the Official Language of the United States (90 FR, doc 2025-03694) ↗

Official source

Data as of

Mar 1, 2025

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Notes

English is the language of government, healthcare, housing and services throughout the country, and since March 2025 it is also the designated official language at federal level — the first such designation in US history. Spanish is a genuine second language of daily life in parts of the south-west, Florida and large cities, and federal agencies still provide multilingual services, but nothing about daily life requires another language.

United States Postal Service — service commitments and network (Ground Advantage, Priority Mail), alongside UPS, FedEx and Amazon Logistics coverage ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Aug 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Classified from carrier service standards: USPS delivers to every address in the country including PO boxes and rural routes, with Priority Mail at 1–3 days and Ground Advantage at 2–5; UPS and FedEx both offer guaranteed next-day air nationwide with real-time tracking as standard; Amazon Logistics reaches a large majority of the population with same-day or next-day delivery. Rated 'excellent' on the strength of nationwide next-day availability and universal address coverage, despite a parcel-locker network that is thinner than Poland's or France's — Amazon Lockers and Hub apartment lockers exist in metros but there is no dense third-party locker estate.

Notes

Cash on delivery is effectively extinct in US consumer e-commerce, unlike Italy or Mexico; card or account payment is assumed. Delivery to the door is the default even in apartment buildings, and package theft from doorsteps is a real and widely reported problem in cities.

M-Lab NDT country aggregates for the United States ↗

Open data

Data as of

Dec 31, 2023

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Median of the 344 daily country-median download values for US in 2023, which ranged 43.9–89.1 Mbps. M-Lab NDT is a single-stream test and reads well below advertised or Ookla-style figures — comparable only within this criterion. 2023 is the latest full year in M-Lab's public statistics API; the 2024 file stops on 26 March.

Notes

The highest reading of any country in this dataset on this metric — roughly three times Italy's — and it reflects a cable and fibre market that competes on headline speed. What the median hides is the price and the choice: monthly costs for gigabit service run well above European levels, and a large share of addresses have exactly one wired provider. Rural coverage remains the weak spot, though federal broadband funding is being deployed against it.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2024 annual means (series CXU*LB0101M and CXU*LB0502M via the BLS public API) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024, all consumer units: average annual expenditures $78,535 across an average 2.4 persons. Removing shelter ($16,317, the rent-equivalent line), personal insurance and pensions ($9,797, which is saving rather than consumption) and cash contributions ($2,292, which are transfers) leaves $50,129 of consumption. Divided by 2.4 people and by 12 months = $1,740.59 per person per month.

Notes

Per-capita basis, to match how Italy, Spain, Czechia, Austria and France are computed in this dataset. The BLS also publishes the real one-person consumer unit, which is what a solo mover actually faces: $48,794 a year, or $29,359 after removing the same three lines — about $2,447 a month excluding rent, 41% above the per-capita figure because a person living alone has no household economies of scale. Read $1,741 as the comparable cross-country number and $2,447 as the realistic personal one. Both include US health spending, which is why every line involving healthcare runs far above the European entries.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — AirData annual concentration by monitor, 2024 (parameter 88101, PM2.5 FRM/FEM mass, 24-hour) ↗

Official source

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Annual arithmetic mean of 6.44 µg/m³ recorded in 2024 at the McMillan NCore-PAMS site, the District's single regulatory PM2.5 monitor with full-year coverage (97% observation completeness, no exceptional events flagged).

Notes

The cleanest air of the three US cities here and among the cleanest in this dataset — 1.3× the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³, well inside the US standard of 9. One monitor is a thin basis for a whole city compared with New York's eight, but the District is small and flat, and the neighbouring monitors in the same EPA dataset agree: Aurora Hills in Arlington, Virginia reads 6.49–6.91 and HU-Beltsville in Prince George's County, Maryland reads 5.61–6.10.

Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI — Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 (NCJ 310856), Table 1 ↗

Official source

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Notes

17,420 homicides in 2024, a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 — down sharply from 6.1 in 2023, continuing the retreat from the 2020–21 spike. Still several times the Western European level: Italy records 0.6, and no European country in this dataset is above 1.2. The national figure also hides an enormous internal range: New York State records 2.7 and California 4.2, while several southern states run above 8. Estimated by the BJS/FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System Estimation Program from agencies covering about 96% of the population.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — 2026 Marketplace Open Enrollment Period State-Level Public Use File, national total row ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Jan 15, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

CMS reports an average monthly premium of $741 before advance premium tax credits across the 23,130,860 people who selected a plan for 2026 through HealthCare.gov and the state exchanges; ×12 = $8,892 a year. Average premium after tax credits is $178 a month.

Notes

Basis differs from the other countries here and the difference matters. This is an enrollee-weighted average across all ages and all metal levels, not a quote for a healthy 35-year-old: the marketplace risk pool skews old (41% of enrollees are 45 or over), and the Affordable Care Act lets insurers charge the oldest adults up to three times the youngest, so a 35-year-old pays meaningfully less than $741 a month. No age adjustment was applied because CMS's default uniform age-rating curve was not retrievable at the verification date. Two further caveats: most enrollees do not pay the sticker price — premium tax credits cut the average to $178 a month — and this is individual-market insurance with deductibles and coinsurance on top, not the comprehensive low-deductible cover the other entries quote. Even discounted for all of that, US health cover is the most expensive in this dataset by a wide margin, and it is the single largest fixed cost a freelancer moving to the United States takes on.

International Schools Database — city coverage (no Washington page) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Aug 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Recorded as a gap rather than estimated. The directory used for New York City, Athens, Rome, Milan and Genoa has no Washington page, so the comparable count does not exist. The IB World Schools and Cambridge International registries, which would allow an accreditation-based count instead, answer automated requests with a bot challenge we do not bypass, and the United States has no national register of foreign-curriculum schools.

Notes

Washington almost certainly has an unusually high provision for its size, because a diplomatic capital attracts national schools — but 'almost certainly' is not a number, and the count belongs here only once it can be sourced on the same basis as the other cities.

IRS — Digital assets: for U.S. tax purposes digital assets are property, not currency, and income from them is taxable ↗

Official source

Data as of

Aug 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Notes

Holding, trading and spending crypto is legal throughout the United States and banking access is normal. Tax treatment is the friction rather than the legality: digital assets are property, so every disposal — including paying for something in crypto or swapping one token for another — is a taxable event producing capital gain or loss, and every federal return asks a digital-asset question on its first page. Exchanges are regulated at both federal level (FinCEN money-services-business registration and anti-money-laundering rules) and state level (New York's BitLicense is the strictest), and brokers now report customer transactions to the IRS. Classified 'legal-regulated' rather than 'legal-friendly' because nothing about the tax treatment is favourable: there is no de minimis exemption for small payments and no long-term holding relief beyond the ordinary capital-gains rates.

FinCEN — Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR): required when foreign accounts exceed $10,000 in aggregate at any time in the year ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Aug 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Composite. No capital or currency controls: the dollar is fully convertible and personal funds move in and out freely, which is the 'low' end of this scale. Against that: reporting is unusually broad. US persons must file an FBAR whenever foreign financial accounts exceed $10,000 in aggregate at any point in the year, FATCA obliges foreign banks worldwide to identify US account holders, currency of $10,000 or more must be declared when crossing the border, and citizens and permanent residents are taxed on worldwide income wherever they live — a rule almost no other country applies. Banking access for a newly arrived foreigner is workable but slow, generally requiring an SSN or ITIN. Rated 'moderate': money moves freely, but it is watched more closely than in most of the countries here, and the tax net follows you out of the country.

Notes

The worldwide-taxation rule is the one to understand before taking a green card. Permanent residents remain US taxpayers on global income for as long as they hold the status, whether or not they live in the United States, and formally abandoning it can trigger an expatriation tax.

SettleMetric tax engine over official 2026 federal rules (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32; IRS self-employment tax; SSA 2026 contribution base) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Jan 1, 2026

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Best eligible scheme us-sole-proprietor-federal at €60,000 = $68,394 (ECB 1.1399 USD/EUR, 2026-07-02) with 10% expenses. Net profit $61,554.60; self-employment tax 15.3% on 92.35% of it = $8,697.38; half deducted, giving AGI $57,205.91; less the $16,100 standard deduction and a §199A deduction of $8,221.18 leaves taxable income $32,884.73, taxed $3,698.17. Total levies $12,395.55 / $68,394 = 18.1%. This is federal tax only, which is the whole story just in the nine states that levy no income tax on earned income.

Notes

The single number hides the widest internal spread of any country in this dataset. The same freelancer pays 18.1% in Texas or Florida, 20.5% in California (us-sole-proprietor-california) and 24.4% in New York City (us-sole-proprietor-new-york-city), where state and city income taxes stack on the federal one. Read this figure as the floor available to someone free to choose their state, not as a national average. It also excludes the self-employed health-insurance deduction and retirement contributions, both of which US freelancers use heavily and both of which would lower it.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — AirData annual concentration by monitor, 2024 (parameter 88101, PM2.5 FRM/FEM mass, 24-hour) ↗

Official source

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Annual arithmetic mean of 6.44 µg/m³ recorded in 2024 at the McMillan NCore-PAMS site, the District's single regulatory PM2.5 monitor with full-year coverage (97% observation completeness, no exceptional events flagged).

Notes

The cleanest air of the three US cities here and among the cleanest in this dataset — 1.3× the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³, well inside the US standard of 9. One monitor is a thin basis for a whole city compared with New York's eight, but the District is small and flat, and the neighbouring monitors in the same EPA dataset agree: Aurora Hills in Arlington, Virginia reads 6.49–6.91 and HU-Beltsville in Prince George's County, Maryland reads 5.61–6.10.

Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI — Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 (NCJ 310856), Table 1 ↗

Official source

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Notes

17,420 homicides in 2024, a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 — down sharply from 6.1 in 2023, continuing the retreat from the 2020–21 spike. Still several times the Western European level: Italy records 0.6, and no European country in this dataset is above 1.2. The national figure also hides an enormous internal range: New York State records 2.7 and California 4.2, while several southern states run above 8. Estimated by the BJS/FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System Estimation Program from agencies covering about 96% of the population.

SettleMetric — computed from the Washington Reagan National 1991–2020 NOAA normals ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Dec 31, 2020

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Months whose 1991–2020 normals have a mean daily maximum of 15–28°C and under 150mm of precipitation: April, May, September, October = 4. June, July and August are excluded for heat (29.5–32°C), November to March for cold. No month is excluded for rain.

Notes

The lowest count in this dataset's US coverage, and the metric flatters the city slightly at both ends: it does not account for humidity, which makes a 32°C July afternoon in Washington harder work than a dry 32°C elsewhere.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2024 annual means (series CXU*LB0101M and CXU*LB0502M via the BLS public API) ↗

Curated by SettleMetric

Data as of

Dec 31, 2024

Verified

Aug 1, 2026

Method

Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024, all consumer units: average annual expenditures $78,535 across an average 2.4 persons. Removing shelter ($16,317, the rent-equivalent line), personal insurance and pensions ($9,797, which is saving rather than consumption) and cash contributions ($2,292, which are transfers) leaves $50,129 of consumption. Divided by 2.4 people and by 12 months = $1,740.59 per person per month.

Notes

Per-capita basis, to match how Italy, Spain, Czechia, Austria and France are computed in this dataset. The BLS also publishes the real one-person consumer unit, which is what a solo mover actually faces: $48,794 a year, or $29,359 after removing the same three lines — about $2,447 a month excluding rent, 41% above the per-capita figure because a person living alone has no household economies of scale. Read $1,741 as the comparable cross-country number and $2,447 as the realistic personal one. Both include US health spending, which is why every line involving healthcare runs far above the European entries.