California’s Taxes
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) claims that “Texas and Florida are the REAL high-tax states” and that “Texas taxes poor folks more than” California taxes “our richest.”
IN FACT, California collects an average of $10,319 in taxes for every person in the state, while Texas collects $5,469, and Florida collects $4,914. Likewise, California collects 13.5% of its economy in taxes, while Florida collects 9.1%, and Texas collects 8.6%.
Broken down by types of taxes:
- California’s top personal income tax rate is 13.3%, as compared to 0% in Texas and 0% in Florida.
- California’s property taxes average 2.8% of personal income, as compared to 3.6% in Texas and 2.6% in Florida.
- California’s top unemployment insurance tax rate is 6.2%, as compared to 6.2% in Texas and 5.4% in Florida.
- California’s sales tax rate is 7.2%, as compared to 6.2% in Texas and 6.0% in Florida.
- California’s excise tax on a gallon of gas is 70.9 cents, as compared to 20.0 cents in Texas and 40.3 cents in Florida.
The fiction that California is a low-tax state comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which uses fatally flawed methods to calculate tax rates. Nevertheless, many media outlets cite ITEP without any disclaimers or insights about their faulty methodologies.
