WalletHub just came out with its latest state comparison, and it’s not a big surprise to find out where Illinois ranks in this one.

In order to determine who pays the least and who pays the most relative to their state, the personal-finance website WalletHub today (Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018) released its 2018 Property Taxes by State report, which compares home and vehicle taxes across the nation and features insights from a panel of experts.

In a ranking from lowest property taxes to highest, Illinois is 50th.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that Illinois wasn’t dead last. (WalletHub includes the District of Columbia, for a total of 51 “states.”) That honor goes to New Jersey, where average taxes for a $184,700 home are $4,437. The effective real estate tax rate in New Jersey is 2.40 percent.

Illinois has an average tax bill of $4,288 for a $184,700 home and an effective real estate tax rate of 2.32 percent.

See the chart below or hold your cursor over the map embedded above for more information.

Real estate taxes are lowest in Hawaii, according to the WalletHub survey. In the Aloha state, annual property taxes on a $184,700 home are $501 and the effective real estate tax rate is 0.27 percent.

The average American household spends $2,197 on property taxes for their homes each year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Considering these figures and the rising amount of debt in America, it should come as no surprise that more than $14 billion in property taxes go unpaid each year,” WalletHub said.

It should be noted that the cost of living and property values are higher in other states. Which means that median property values are higher as well.

That’s especially bad news for New Jersey, where a median-valued home pays a whopping $7,601 in taxes. That compares to $4,058 for a median-valued home in Illinois.

So if you’re looking at “bang for your buck,” check out the the column  laballed “Annual Taxes on Home Priced at State Median Value” in the graphic below.

In that category, several East Coast states leapfrog over Illinois in the race for highest property taxes — including New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.

Methodology

In order to determine the states with the highest and lowest property taxes, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia by using U.S. Census Bureau data to determine real-estate property tax rates.

WalletHub divided the “median real-estate tax payment” by the “median home price” in each state, then used the resulting rates to obtain the dollar amount paid as real-estate tax on a house worth $184,700, the median value for a home in the U.S. as of 2016 according to the Census Bureau.