If your point (and the article's point) is that sales taxes are regressive and that moving from California where Prop 13 locks your property tax rate to a new s

If your point (and the article's point) is that sales taxes are regressive and that moving from California where Prop 13 locks your property tax rate to a new state with high property taxes is effectively regressive, I guess... okay. That's not really news to anyone or surprising. If you were not in California or Texas, but had to pick one to move to, you'd be better off moving to Texas at any income level at or above the federal median income. While the property tax rates are lower in California and can be locked in with Prop 13, the house prices are massively higher. You can buy a nice home in Texas for $250k in most of the state (not in Austin), and that same house in California would be minimum $1M. A smaller percentage of a significantly higher valuation is still a boatload of money. Also, you are making a bunch of conclusions not in evidence. The evidence, at least for Texas, shows that the majority of tax revenue comes from high income earners, primarily because they're land owners who buy more expensive/larger properties and because they make larger purchases. The state gets its income from property tax and sales tax primarily, both of which are considered "regressive taxes". While you're correct that these taxes account for a larger percentage of income for someone with lower income, the net effect is that the majority of the tax burden is being paid by more wealthy residents. Generally the right thing to do for people in lower income brackets in states without income tax is to increase their income, since they aren't penalized for it. In other states, you get penalized for increasing income, and in many cases are completely out of reach of ever having property ownership. Average people own homes in Texas, average people in California rent forever. Ultimately, I suppose it's a good thing for these sorts of analysis to occur because it's more information to consider, but I do think there's some insidiousness to the way this is framed both in the article and in many of the comments. I don't even live in Texas anymore, but I definitely don't want to see it Californiated. If you want to live in California and think it's a better deal, go live in California, don't demand that Texas matches the same tax regime.