This is, at best, a misleading statement: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur... shows that California is 10th by tax burden, not 1st. It's not even first by income tax burden.
70,000 - 8800 (married filing jointly) - 2000 (two dependents) = $59200 taxable income, $2960 tax bill. An effective rate of 4.22%
To reach the site's stated 3.29%, this family would need to make around 32k a year.
Fwiw, it appears the average household income in Massachusetts is about 80k.
Of course, that’s just advertising law (what you can legally claim about your product), this is an online forum based on higher standards.
Words matters. Their context matters.
As for personal income, you declare it every year on your tax form.
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2020/2020-California-Tax-Rate-S...
Why do so many people not understand how graduated income taxes work? And why wouldn’t you average the tax burden across the entire California population when calculating its “tax rate”, unless you are claiming the highest tax rate in California someone could actually pay rather than the rates paid on average?
But I guess these are the same people that don’t understand how America dealt with a 90% income tax rate in the 1950s. Or a 77% tax rate until 1981!
To be fair, when people criticize the tax rate, be it state or federal, it is usually implied they are referencing the highest tax rate. Apples to apples, it’s a rough but fairly accurate proxy for relative so called “tax burden.” One would expect states with roughly equivalent highest tax rates to scale their tax rates about the same as income goes down.
That is incredibly stupid. Someone (single) in Alabama making $40k/year is paying 4.07% effective state income tax rate, in California they are just paying 2.37%. States with lower top tax rates are usually more regressive than states with higher top tax rates, red southern states being the main example of states with regressive taxation.
This actually validates my point. 40K in Alabama goes a lot farther than 40K in California, based on differences in average cost of living. Just look at relative gas prices. Why are you so hostile? You shouldn’t bully fellow commenters on HN.
Alabama is nearly last in everything for a good reason. That Californians have a much longer life expectancy (with correspondingly lower obesity rates and fewer health problems) shows that there is more to measuring COL than just what people can buy.
I only pointed out that the assumption that higher top tax rates meant higher bottom tax rates as well is incredibly stupid, if anything, the converse is true (higher top tax rates usually mean lower bottom tax rates, not higher).
That actually wasn’t the argument being made. Which I think is why you keep validating my point. You can reread what I wrote to verify.