Showing results for California, US
Houses are more expensive in CA but the property taxes are considerably lessened. A $450,000 in CA's valley will run you about $5,000 a year in property taxes (1.11 rate) A $450,000 home North of Dallas is $6,700 a year (1.49 rate) In the case of a $450,000 home, while you're busy paying off a 30-year mortgage you'll also end up paying an additional $51,000 in Texas property taxes. This can be offset by Texas not having a income tax...but the minimum wage in Texas is $7.25 an hour, compared to Cali's $16.00 an hour (moving to $16.50 next year). Answer from YoProfWhite on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/personalfinance › texas vs california: property taxes/cost of living
r/personalfinance on Reddit: Texas vs California: property taxes/cost of living
December 23, 2021 -

I've been debating between Houston/Dallas/LA. I've never been to California before, but everyone always says you shouldn't live there because you'll end up homeless or in a tent because the housing values are so extreme. However, when you look at property taxes the argument changes. For example, this 175k condo in Houston https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3525-Sage-Rd-APT-1407-Houston-TX-77056/28494918_zpid/ has similar property taxes to a condo in LA that costs 575k https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4915-Tyrone-Ave-APT-201-Sherman-Oaks-CA-91423/19974959_zpid/

WIth this said is Texas really a cheaper state to live in? I mean it comes less clear when you look at single family homes compared to condos because the lowest cost I see for small homes is around 900k. But you can find some omes for around 700-800k if you look. Even then if you look at this 875k home with 561 a month in property taxes https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11916-Salem-Dr-Granada-Hills-CA-91344/20108060_zpid/

compared to this 317k home that has 605 a month in Houston

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2826-Francis-St-Houston-TX-77004/27758579_zpid/.

Since I'm looking at condos though would it be cheaper to buy in California compared to Texas? Or is there other things I'm missing? I mean I hear all the homeless stories and tent city stories in the news and that always kept me from moving to Cali, but is it really that hard to live out there? I've always considered LA as a place to move because it seems like there would be a lot more to do there, but the news stories and cost of living have always scared me away.

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You will be paying a much, much higher monthly mortgage on an 875k home than a 317k home, ~$2300 a month more, at 3% rate of interest. The property tax comparison ignores this. California has higher income taxes than Texas, so that puts pressure on your available take-home pay.
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Why don’t you start with finding a place you’d enjoy living? You’ll make everything else work.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › why texans actually pay more in taxes than californians do
r/texas on Reddit: Why Texans actually pay more in taxes than Californians do
November 4, 2024 - On the one hand, Texans pay a lot more in state tax than Californians (unless you are the top 1%). But on the other hand, we get a lot less in return. ... U.S. States with the Highest Property Taxes for Homeowners in 2025
Videos
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The Truth No One Talks About! California vs. Texas - YouTube
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California VS Texas Property and State Income Tax
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/economy › think texas has a cheaper tax burden than california? think again.
r/economy on Reddit: Think Texas has a cheaper tax burden than California? Think again.
December 30, 2022 - I see people moving back from TX because of property tax sticker shock. ... The total tax burden in Texas is lower than in California. In fact, Texas has the 6th lowest overall tax burden.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › texas vs california: property taxes/cost of living
r/texas on Reddit: Texas vs California: property taxes/cost of living
March 29, 2020 -

I've been debating between Houston/Dallas/LA. I've never been to California before, but everyone always says you shouldn't live there because you'll end up homeless or in a tent because the housing values are so extreme. However, when you look at property taxes the argument changes. For example, this 175k condo in Houston https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3525-Sage-Rd-APT-1407-Houston-TX-77056/28494918_zpid/ has similar property taxes to a condo in LA that costs 575k https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4915-Tyrone-Ave-APT-201-Sherman-Oaks-CA-91423/19974959_zpid/

With this said, is Texas really a cheaper state to live in? I mean it comes less clear when you look at single family homes compared to condos because the lowest cost I see for small homes is around 900k. But you can find some homes for around 700-800k if you look. Even then if you look at this 875k home with 561 a month in property taxes https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11916-Salem-Dr-Granada-Hills-CA-91344/20108060_zpid/

compared to this 317k home that has 605 a month in Houston

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2826-Francis-St-Houston-TX-77004/27758579_zpid/.

Since I'm looking at condos though would it be cheaper to buy in California compared to Texas? Or is there other things I'm missing? I mean I hear all the homeless stories and tent city stories in the news and that always kept me from moving to Cali, but is it really that hard to live out there? I've always considered LA as a place to move because it seems like there would be a lot more to do there, but the news stories and cost of living have always scared me away.

Also, the lowest I'm finding for even a small home or condo in any of the Texas cities is around 300k, and at that rate if you get a 600k condo in LA, you would be 2x the amount of property taxes each month 300 in LA vs 600 mo in Texas.

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I live in Austin, my brother lives in the Inland Empire in SoCal. Our households bring in similar incomes and home values are similar. When we’ve compared taxation and COL (we pay more property tax in TX but don’t have state income tax, groceries are way cheaper in Cali but gas is not)… basically it shook out fairly close for us but seems you’ll get more services & more of a safety net in CA with your tax money compared to Texas. 🤷‍♀️

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Also, your taxes don’t go up, unlike texas where it is skyrocketing.

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › yes, texans actually pay more in taxes than californians do
r/texas on Reddit: Yes, Texans actually pay more in taxes than Californians do
June 19, 2022 - ... Slightly lower property taxes offset by much higher property values.... Cali has a progressive income tax( including their own child tax credits , resulting in negative tax burdens for the poor) ....where Texas doesn't have an income tax at all.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/realestate › actual state property tax comparison
r/RealEstate on Reddit: Actual State Property Tax Comparison
2 weeks ago -
StateAnnual property tax for median priced homeSize of median home [sqft]Average property tax per square foot [$/sqft]
Alabama$ 7382146$ 0.34
West Virginia$ 8351752$ 0.48
Arkansas$ 1,0031860$ 0.54
South Carolina$ 1,1992123$ 0.56
Mississippi$ 1,1892065$ 0.58
Louisiana$ 1,1461955$ 0.59
Tennessee$ 1,4002157$ 0.65
Wyoming$ 1,6592285$ 0.73
Indiana$ 1,4962011$ 0.74
Kentucky$ 1,4721953$ 0.75
Delaware$ 1,7312277$ 0.76
Oklahoma$ 1,5201941$ 0.78
New Mexico$ 1,6692087$ 0.80
North Carolina$ 1,8152152$ 0.84
Utah$ 2,4122800$ 0.86
Idaho$ 2,0062311$ 0.87
Arizona$ 1,8582049$ 0.91
Nevada$ 1,9702060$ 0.96
Georgia$ 2,2142262$ 0.98
Colorado$ 2,4482464$ 0.99
Missouri$ 1,8871848$ 1.02
North Dakota$ 2,3922190$ 1.09
Montana$ 2,5352200$ 1.15
Virginia$ 2,6862105$ 1.28
Florida$ 2,5551960$ 1.30
Kansas$ 2,6432020$ 1.31
South Dakota$ 2,5901915$ 1.35
Ohio$ 2,7121803$ 1.50
Minnesota$ 3,1842026$ 1.57
Pennsylvania$ 3,2412045$ 1.58
Michigan$ 2,7951726$ 1.62
Nebraska$ 3,3502016$ 1.66
Iowa$ 2,7951623$ 1.72
Maine$ 2,9261680$ 1.74
Maryland$ 3,9892207$ 1.81
Hawaii$ 2,1831164$ 1.88
Texas$ 4,1112170$ 1.89
Oregon$ 3,7671946$ 1.94
Alaska$ 3,7851910$ 1.98
Washington$ 4,3612185$ 2.00
Wisconsin$ 3,7461822$ 2.06
Vermont$ 4,9562000$ 2.48
Rhode Island$ 4,8541913$ 2.54
California$ 4,9261860$ 2.65
Connecticut$ 6,5752158$ 3.05
Illinois$ 5,1891700$ 3.05
Massachusetts$ 5,8131800$ 3.23
New Hampshire$ 6,5051934$ 3.36
New York$ 6,4501490$ 4.33
New Jersey$ 9,5411753$ 5.44

I put this together because I always see property taxes compared across states talking about % of home value, or raw $ amount. But it always irked me because houses are different sizes in different states. So what I did here is the following:

  1. Tabulated the median annual property tax bill for a house in each state.

  2. Tabulated the median house size in each state.

  3. Divided #1/#2 to get a "property tax bill per square foot".

  4. Sorted the table from lowest to highest tax $/sqft

In this way, if we compare column #3, we actually are comparing apples to apples (same home size to same home size). You can see that column #3 is similar to column #1, since there isn't THAT much of a difference in house sizes between states, but there are some interesting differences that cause a few states to jump higher in column 3 than they are in column 1.

Some brief conclusions:

Utah is actually cheaper than it seems because their houses are HUGE

Hawaii is actually more expensive than it seems because their houses are TINY

Missouri is actually a bit more expensive than it seems because their houses are smaller than average

Connecticut is actually a bit cheaper than it seems because their houses are much bigger than their high tax state neighbors (NY, NJ, MA)

New York is much more expensive than it seems (even though it already is towards the top) due to small house sizes.

New Jersey is just super expensive for property taxes, whether you factor in house size or not.

Anyway, hope folks enjoy this little bit of data. Maybe it will help a few people make more educated decisions, maybe not. If nothing else, it's just a curious thing to analyze.

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It would be more illuminating to add average sales tax burden and maybe state income tax, as well. Those places that don’t have high property taxes often have heavy sales tax and/or state income tax. There’s no free lunch, though some places like HI and FL have advantages in that they can push a lot of their property tax burden off on visitors in the form of sales and hotel taxes.
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Need another column for price per sqft. I used to live on the border of Illinois and Iowa. Iowa had much cheaper property tax but the houses were far more expensive. The end result was that the mortgage payments were roughly the same.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › on the one hand, texans pay a lot more in state tax than californians (unless you are the top 1%). but on the other hand, we get a lot less in return.
r/texas on Reddit: On the one hand, Texans pay a lot more in state tax than Californians (unless you are the top 1%). But on the other hand, we get a lot less in return.
December 28, 2023 -

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texans-pay-more-taxes-than-californians-17400644.php

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Republicans have been working this "tax" con for decades.
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The cost of small government is extremely high.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/askeconomics › it is often said that states with no income tax (i.e. texas) "get you" with high sales and property tax. but how can that be if the sum of all of these taxes is still less than the % you'd pay in income tax?
r/AskEconomics on Reddit: It is often said that states with no income tax (i.e. Texas) "get you" with high sales and property tax. But how can that be if the sum of all of these taxes is still less than the % you'd pay in income tax?
December 19, 2023 -

Texas is often criticized for it's "obfuscated" tax burden. But Texas's sales tax of 6.25% is lower than NYs 8.875%, and Californias 7.25%. Average property tax in Texas is 1.60% (double than Californias but still low).

Another thing I don't get is this: if I live in California and earn 50k, I pay 10k in taxes (20%). So if I live in a no-income-tax state, I shouldn't care about additional minor taxtations as long as they don't amount to 20% or more.

I am sure I may be wrong about 80% of this, but I struggle to figure out how.

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Partly it’s because the tax on earnings versus a tax on spending would be different to achieve the same revenue from simple math. Let’s say apples cost $1 and you earn $100. You only buy apples. Suppose the state imposes a 20% income tax. (Assume prices don’t change to shift tax burden for simplicity) You can now only buy 80 apples and the government collects $20 in tax revenue Alternatively suppose the government uses a sales tax of 20%. Now apples cost $1.20 and you can only afford 83.3 apples and the government is only collecting $16.67 in revenue. So to collect the same revenues as the income tax, the sales tax would need too be more than 20%. It would need to be 25%.
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The argument is that while Texas income taxes are low, it is likely to wash for the average person because property and sales taxes are higher. The other argument made is that ppl usually look at California's top income tax rate and compare that to the 0% on offer in Texas, ignoring that the top California rate (12.3%) only affects income in excess of 700k for an individual and like $1.3 million filling married. Most ppl will be have an effective tax rate more like 5%. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/california-state-tax This article does a decent job of going through some details. It shows the average state and local tax burden as a % of median HHI and Texas is actually higher than Cali (some perhaps arguable assumptions). But like all blended statistics it hides a lot of variability, which is actually outlined nicely in the article. https://fortune.com/2023/03/23/states-with-lowest-highest-tax-burden/
Find elsewhere
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › these are the u.s. states with the highest property taxes—new york and california aren't in the top 10
r/texas on Reddit: These are the U.S. states with the highest property taxes—New York and California aren't in the top 10
August 21, 2023 -

Someone from r/california is flexing about property taxes for their state. What to see where Texas is?

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I like articles such as this one that at least attempt to properly contextualize and not just be a clickbait Top 10 list of "high is always bad, low is always good", which is overly simplistic: In New Jersey, there’s a strong emphasis on local control of public services, particularly education. Those education costs are amongst the highest in the nation , and they’re mostly paid through property taxes . Likewise, Illinois has more units of local government than any other state, according to the state’s legislative handbook . These are funded by property taxes, with a big chunk of those taxes paying for education and state employee pension obligations. By contrast, Hawaii’s government is more centralized at the state level and relies on tourism more than property taxes to pay for government services. As a result, property taxes are the lowest in the country. However, even with low property taxes, Hawaii is still the most expensive state to buy a house, according to a recent LendingTree study. Notably, relatively low-tax states like New Hampshire and Texas are amongst the states with the highest effective property tax rates. Since neither state levies income taxes, they’re more reliant on property taxes to pay for a greater share of government services.
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Based on this,.Texas should have some of the best schools in the nation.
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Texas Tax Protest
texastaxprotest.com › home › texas vs. california property taxes: which state hits your wallet harder?
Property Tax Texas vs California
June 9, 2025 - When it comes to property taxes, few topics spark stronger opinions than the Texas vs. California debate. What might seem like a straightforward comparison between the Lone Star State and the Golden State reveals a maze of local rules and tax laws that surprise homeowners and investors.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/california › fact check: newsom says working-class taxes are higher in texas, florida than california. is he right? —he’s right about those making up to roughly $55,000 a year.
r/California on Reddit: Fact check: Newsom says working-class taxes are higher in Texas, Florida than California. Is he right? —He’s right about those making up to roughly $55,000 a year.
December 16, 2023 - I don't get why people are comparing ... For an equivalent property you're still paying thousands of dollars in property taxes a year if you buy in CA because the same home might cost $2M vs $0.3M in TX....
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SmartAsset
smartasset.com › financial-advisor › property-tax-texas-vs-california
Comparing Property Taxes in Texas vs. California
March 12, 2025 - The absence of a state income tax means Texas relies more heavily on property taxes for revenue. California’s effective property tax rate is lower, averaging around 0.71%. This relatively low rate is partly due to Proposition 13, a law that ...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/california › yes, texans actually pay more in taxes than californians do
r/California on Reddit: Yes, Texans actually pay more in taxes than Californians do
May 22, 2021 - ... 2 things - you're not going to have $1.5M in the bank, you're going to pay a BIG chunk of that to capital gains, so a bit more than half of it. Second, that property tax in California is going to go up slower than the Texas property tax will, ...
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/samegrassbutgreener › why texans actually pay more in taxes than californians do
r/SameGrassButGreener on Reddit: Why Texans actually pay more in taxes than Californians do
August 24, 2024 - In Texas only the rate of increase is capped but it should eventually catch up to market value unlike California More replies More replies ... CA Prop 13 is anti-poor and very backward.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/texas › in response to the earlier texas/california taxes post, figured i would try my hand at not excluding 19% of taxpayers and providing sources
r/texas on Reddit: In response to the earlier Texas/California taxes post, figured i would try my hand at not excluding 19% of taxpayers and providing sources
September 26, 2023 -

I know it’s popular to hate on Texas on Reddit, and if you take issue with a regressive tax system that’s fair, but these low effort misleading posts just trying to dunk on Texas with hundreds of upvotes… come on now 🤠

Sources:

https://itep.org/whopays/california-who-pays-7th-edition/

https://itep.org/texas-who-pays-7th-edition/

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I appreciate having real data, but this still doesn’t look good for Texas.
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This post dunks on Texas hard. Weird that OP doesn’t see that.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/economy › fact check: newsom says working-class taxes are higher in texas, florida than california. he’s right about those making up to roughly $55,000 a year. “many states that tout themselves as ‘low tax’ states are often only low tax for the wealthy, and high tax for lower-income families.”
r/economy on Reddit: Fact check: Newsom says working-class taxes are higher in Texas, Florida than California. He’s right about those making up to roughly $55,000 a year. “Many states that tout themselves as ‘low tax’ states are often only low tax for the wealthy, and high tax for lower-income families.”
December 16, 2023 - Does that also take in to account in California's very high sales tax, California's very high property tax, and California's very high gas tax? ... Property taxes in Texas are considerably higher than in California.
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virtualcpaforyou
virtualcpaforyou.com › comparestatetaxrates
Texas vs California State Tax |San Francisco CPA |Virtual CPA
The Texas state sales and use tax rate is 6.25%. Adding city, county tax up to 2% for maximum about 8.25% California's average effective property tax rate is actually among the lowest comparing to other states: at 0.72%. Adding additional parcel ...
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California Local
californialocal.com › localnews › statewide › ca › article › show › 32602-texas-taxes-california-lower-comparison
Texas Taxes Lower Than California’s? Not So Fast! Here’s How States Compare
April 5, 2023 - Thanks in large part to Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that caps local property tax rates and limits future increases, California taxpayers enjoy the 16th-lowest overall property tax obligation of the 50 states.
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Ownwell
ownwell.com › blog › property-tax-in-texas-vs-california
Property Taxes in Texas vs. California: What Property Owners Need to Know
California (which has been a hot topic), including the overall tax structure: Texas property taxes are based on a regressive system in which lower-income earners pay a higher percentage of their overall income in taxes. The state does not collect a state income tax to generate tax revenue, but instead depends heavily on property taxes to fund local governments and local services like schools and roads.
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Nasdaq
nasdaq.com › articles › comparing-property-taxes-texas-vs-california
Comparing Property Taxes in Texas vs. California | Nasdaq
The absence of a state income tax means Texas relies more heavily on property taxes for revenue. California’s effective property tax rate is lower, averaging around 0.71%. This relatively low rate is partly due to Proposition 13, a law that ...