(MONEY Magazine) – IF YOU HATE TAXES, YOU'D LOVE LIVING IN KNOXVILLE. According to MONEY's exclusive analysis, that city has the lowest state and local tax burden of the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas. In Knoxville, a typical MONEY subscriber family with two incomes and two kids would pay $4,641 in state and local taxes. The family would shell out only a few hundred dollars more in the other metro areas in our top five--Las Vegas, Sarasota/Bradenton, Jacksonville and Orlando.

Go north, though, and it's a different story. The same family living in the New York City area would be relieved of--gulp--$17,144, nearly four times more.

This year, instead of analyzing the taxes paid in each state by the typical MONEY family, as we have done for the past six years, we examined such a family's total state and local tax bill for 1995 in each of the 100 largest metro areas.

The hypothetical family in our study earned $81,005, collected $5,258 from investments and spent $38,982 on food, clothing, a new car and other items. For what the family pays in state and local income, sales, property and gasoline taxes, see the total tax column in the table at right. The next four columns show taxes on earned income alone for singles and couples; income tax estimates were provided by the public accounting firm Ernst & Young. The last column, compiled with data from Runzheimer International, lists property taxes on a four-bedroom house in a neighborhood in which our MONEY family would be likely to live.

--Kelly D. Smith

Reporter associate: Roberta Kirwan