Gov. Gavin Newsom was roasted for making a unprecedented declare that Florida and Texas, not California, are “the REAL high-tax states” — drawing a pointy rebuke from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Newsom made the declare onstage on the SXSW convention Sunday in Austin, Tex. — the place he teased a presidential run — telling attendees that Texas “taxes poor people greater than we tax our richest.”
“Florida is the opposite regressive tax state,” Newsom continued. “Your center class pays extra taxes in Texas than our center class in California.”
The supply of Newsom’s declare seems to be a research from the Institute for Taxation and Coverage, which discovered that Florida ranks the very best of any US state in “tax inequality,” or the share of taxes paid by the poorest in comparison with the richest.
Critics known as Newsom’s allegation doubtful.
“There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Then there’s no matter you’d name the declare that California has decrease taxes than Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis raged on X.
“Even individuals who like California governance acknowledge CA is a really excessive tax state: highest gross sales, revenue and fuel taxes within the nation.”
Jared Walczak, a fellow on the Washington, DC-based Tax Basis, stated Newsom’s declare “doesn’t stand as much as scrutiny.”
“States like Florida and Texas have a lot decrease tax burdens general,” Walczak stated.
“It flies within the face of individuals’s revealed preferences … they’re selecting states with decrease revenue taxes particularly,” he added. “Migration charges inform the story.”
California has a “progressive” tax system that depends closely on revenue taxes from excessive earners, with low charges for the underside rung of earners that enhance quickly alongside revenue.
The Institute for Taxation and Coverage research calculated that the underside 20% of earners pay barely increased general tax charges in Florida and Texas than in California — making an allowance for not simply revenue taxes however property taxes, gross sales and excise taxes, and tax credit.
However Newsom’s declare nonetheless caught many as mind-boggling contemplating California’s general excessive price of residing — together with considerably increased housing and gas prices in comparison with different states.
Though California’s Prop. 13 retains property taxes low for some owners, “others need to bear the brunt of that, Walczak added.
The Tax Basis, Walczak’s agency, ranked California #48 in general tax competitiveness in 2026, a measure that features company, revenue, gross sales and different taxes.
A Wallethub evaluation ranked California #4 within the nation in general tax burden. Texas and Florida had been close to the underside, at #40 and #45, respectively.
David Kline of CalTax, a Sacramento tax coverage advocacy group, added that native parcel taxes and bonds can shortly ratchet up prices — to not point out excessive gross sales taxes, which might run as excessive as 11.2% in some components of Los Angeles county.
“In the event you ask any California who travels to a different state what they paid in taxes, I feel you should have settlement that California’s are increased,” Kline stated.
Newsom additionally dropped his greatest trace but about his widely-expected 2028 bid for the White Home, telling SXSW attendees that he’ll run for president if Democrats take again the Home of Representatives on this yr’s midterms.
It’s not the primary time Newsom has taken a jab at Florida — a well-liked haven for tech bigwigs trying to dodge California’s proposed billionaire tax.
In 2022, Newsom ran advertisements within the Sunshine State urging Floridians against insurance policies like abortion restrictions to maneuver west.
“Freedom is beneath assault in your state,” Newsom stated within the advertisements, which had been funded by his 2022 Newsom for Governor committee.
The next yr, 5 million individuals watched a prime-time Fox Information debate between Newsom and DeSantis through which they sparred over red- and blue-state insurance policies concerning taxes, immigration, and public security.
