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Texas Attracted California Techies. Now It’s Losing Thousands of Them.
(www.texasmonthly.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Source? Texas has no income tax so I’m finding this a weird thing to say
https://itep.org/whopays-7th-edition/#income-taxes
I agree with all this. Not sure it’s relevant.
CA charges almost no tax on its poorest, and the poorest make $0 , so they see no benefit. Same in TX.
So you're just going to be willingly obtuse. Got it.
What mosaicmango and itep are trying to say is that with everything that's taken into consideration, income, property, sales, excise, other taxes and bullshit fees like car registration, that California are better for middle class and lower class because you pay overall less tax there because you don't see that benefit in Texas unless you're in the 1% already rich asshole territory.
So those "fleeing" not seeing actually less money taken out of their yearly salary.
Not being willingly obtuse, this is a good faith discussion. It feels very obtuse on the other end tbh, and I’m genuinely trying to have an intelligent discussion.
“Other taxes and bullshit” I agree 100% that I’m not taking into account. Thats where I’m looking for some sources of specific info. Not just unsourced opinions.
You are being willingly obtuse when I have provided the study abstract that contains the methodology, the data behind it, and 30+ citations and sources.
Don't come talking about 'good faith discussion' and asking for sources when you clearly didn't even bother to read the information provided.
I did not see the link for some reason, just the quote. Once again, I’m not being willingly obtuse. Thank you for the link and I will read it.
It’s not helpful to the discussion to repeatedly tell people how they feel, unless you just want to dismiss the conversation. And in such a case, no reply at all would be a better option imo.
the poorest rely the most on services and on things like clean water. they can’t just jet off to a better area.
Here you go.
Also the corresponding graphic to make it clearer:
~~This isn’t comparing taxes. It’s comparing what section of the population shares more of the total burden.~~
~~This isn’t saying the people in Texas pay more, just that the distribution is different across income groups. Which makes sense because there is no income tax. Overall, the vast majority (and all non-landowners) in Texas is paying less than they would in Cali.~~
~~It’s a misleading graph, possibly on purpose to make people think what you did.~~
Edit: brain fart. further discussion below.
You realize that the percentage of your income that is taxed is a fixed number regardless of state, right? That 1% of 60k in California is the same as 1% of 60k in Texas?
It very directly shows that poorer people in Texas pay more than poorer people in California over the wide range of taxes in each state. They fully take into account land ownership or not, which you can confirm by reading the linked article in the comment:
Ugh I’m sorry. I started trying to make sense of it and then somehow confused myself into thinking it was a % share of total - as if each side added to 100%. Nevermind, I was wrong.
Anyhow, back to the chart - it simply makes no sense in that case. I would need to take a look at the underlying to tell me how the bottom 20% pay 13% of income to taxes in a state with 0% income and 6.25% sales tax. Only thing left is property tax (according to chart it’s those 3).
Yes I realize small local sales taxes may apply, but is a max of 2%.
How much property does this bottom 20% own?!
The bottom 20% of earners aren't likely to make the same amount in CA vs TX.
California's minimum wage is $16. Working 40 hours (hard on a minimum wage job for reasons) brings $640 a week. 10.5% of that is $67
Texas's is $7.25. 40 hours of that job is $290. 13% of that is $38.
In this bad example, a minimum wage earner in California pays almost double the tax than a minimum wage worker in Texas. It's a bad example for many reasons, including us not taking into account the extra spending power the California worker has after taxes.
Youre talking about the total dollar amount of taxes paid, which is irrelevant because of regional differences. What you can compare is percentage of income, which is a metric that works regardless of total dollar wages.
Someone paying $100 to the tax man when they only make $5000 is more of their money then someone paying $200 to the tax man when they make $15000. The first person is paying higher taxes. The total dollar amount is irrelevant compared to the percentage of income paid.
The data is very clear. Almost all Texans pay more of their income to state taxes than almost all Californians. The fact that California provides a more than doubled minimum wage than Texas while taxing people less is a feather directly in their cap.
The fact that Californians make more money overall than Texans is still irrelevant. On a percentage basis, almost all Texans are taxed more in their state than almost all Californians are in theirs. High earners in California are taxed at a much higher rate than high earners in Texas however, which is where that extra tax revenue is coming from.
You can go to the source of the data I initially linked if you like and compare the states directly:
Texas
California
Here is a more recent article of theirs talking about how almost all Californians still pay lower taxes then Texans
Heres an excerpt that addresses your qestion above:
The 20 bil in extra tax revenue you asked about with just 1/3rd larger population than Texas is from taxing the ultra wealthy at the same rate as other families. Since they have the most income by a ludicrous amount, taxing it at 12% instead of 3% like Texas nets a huge amount of money.
It literally isn't though, the graph is labeled and the article explains it in further detail, this is a graph of the percent of income each income group pays in taxes. You explination doesn't even make sense, the numbers of all the groups don't add up to 100%.
I already corrected my brain fart in another comment. Agreed makes no sense. Agreed there too. Will edit.
Income taxes get all the attention but they aren't the only taxes.
I don't know about the 600k figure specifically though.
They aren’t. There is sales tax too, which is higher in Cali. And property taxes seem moot if we’re talking about poor people, no?
It’s an odd argument, but I think it comes down to sales tax and property tax. Property tax is high in texas, and sales tax is 7% (not the highest in the nation, but high, and local sales tax can also run 1-2%). I think the theory is that you only pay so much sales tax in goods for one person, so it balances out california’s higher property taxes.
That makes zero sense.
Cali sales tax is 7.25, Texas is 6.25
Poor people likely don’t own property, but yeah it’s about double in Texas.
Income tax in Cali ramps from 1% up slowly to 9% at just 68k/yr. But even lowest income pays 1%. Texas is 0%.
The argument has no merit. None. California appears to have objectively higher tax on most people, and certainly on all those who don’t own property.
What am I missing?
Landlords pass on higher property taxes to their tenants in the firm of higher rents. You don't need to own property to be affected by high property taxes.
Ok, then we are getting into estimated tax derivatives. Yeah I can’t just make guesses there.
That’s not direct tax.
But I agree there could be something there. It would be minimal I’d assume but I truly don’t know.
Texas has a base sales tax of 6.25, which can be raised by local taxes up to 2%. So it is effectively 8.25% everywhere.
Ok? But that income tax is huge…
I hadn’t considered the fact that some people make money under the table and/or illegally. And this pay not income tax in either state, but a ton of sales tax.
I highly doubt a large amount of that in a 2% local sales tax county is what causes this. If so, that’s crazy.
I feel part of the confusion may be thinking california has a flat tax? It has tax brackets, which increase the percent as you make more.
Yeah, starts at 1%, hits 9% by 68k income. I’m not misunderstanding that. Not seeing how 1% < 0%.