Why are they only talking about income tax? Property tax is also a major factor. If you had two job offers 10 years ago: either CA (good area) or TX (Austin) a

Why are they only talking about income tax? Property tax is also a major factor. If you had two job offers 10 years ago: either CA (good area) or TX (Austin) and got a mortgage. 10 years later Prop 13 would have severely limited the property tax growth of your house while property taxes on a house in TX would have ballooned. Your taxes in TX would have gone up (and can go down) regardless of how much you make. You can max out your 401K to further reduce your taxes in CA while you really have no remedy in TX. CA encourages savers. TX often has to give tax breaks (property and sales) to large companies to locate there. Small businesses (grads starting tech startups that hire more grads) are left to pay the very regressive taxes that hurt them in regressive states like TX. I would also argue that research clusters (both universities and companies who hire their grads) matter far more for grad job seekers than tax. I really question if this article has any real value.