Gov. Gavin Newsom was roasted for making an extraordinary claim that Florida and Texas, not California, are “the REAL high-tax states” — drawing a sharp rebuke from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Newsom made the claim onstage at the SXSW conference Sunday in Austin, Tex. — where he teased a presidential run — telling attendees that Texas “taxes poor folks more than we tax our richest.”
“Florida is the other regressive tax state,” Newsom continued. “Your middle class pays more taxes in Texas than our middle class in California.”
The source of Newsom’s claim appears to be a study from the Institute for Taxation and Policy, which found that Florida ranks the highest of any US state in “tax inequality,” or the share of taxes paid by the poorest compared to the richest.
Critics called Newsom’s allegation dubious.
“There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Then there is whatever you’d call the claim that California has lower taxes than Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis raged on X.
“Even people who like California governance acknowledge CA is a very high tax state: highest sales, income and gas taxes in the nation.”
Jared Walczak, a fellow at the Washington, DC-based Tax Foundation, said Newsom’s claim “does not stand up to scrutiny.”
“States like Florida and Texas have much lower tax burdens overall,” Walczak said.
“It flies in the face of people’s revealed preferences … they are choosing states with lower income taxes in particular,” he added. “Migration rates tell the story.”
California has a “progressive” tax system that relies heavily on income taxes from high earners, with low rates for the bottom rung of earners that increase rapidly alongside income.
The Institute for Taxation and Policy study calculated that the bottom 20% of earners pay slightly higher overall tax rates in Florida and Texas than in California — taking into account not just income taxes but property taxes, sales and excise taxes, and tax credits.
But Newsom’s claim nonetheless stuck many as mind-boggling considering California’s overall high cost of living — including significantly higher housing and fuel costs compared to other states.
Although California’s Prop. 13 keeps property taxes low for some homeowners, “others have to bear the brunt of that, Walczak added.
The Tax Foundation, Walczak’s firm, ranked California #48 in overall tax competitiveness in 2026, a measure that includes corporate, income, sales and other taxes.
A Wallethub analysis ranked California #4 in the country in overall tax burden. Texas and Florida were near the bottom, at #40 and #45, respectively.
David Kline of CalTax, a Sacramento tax policy advocacy organization, added that local parcel taxes and bonds can quickly ratchet up costs — not to mention high sales taxes, which can run as high as 11.2% in some parts of Los Angeles county.
“If you ask any California who travels to another state what they paid in taxes, I think you will have agreement that California’s are higher,” Kline said.
Newsom also dropped his biggest hint yet about his widely-expected 2028 bid for the White House, telling SXSW attendees that he’ll run for president if Democrats take back the House of Representatives in this year’s midterms.
It’s not the first time Newsom has taken a jab at Florida — a popular haven for tech bigwigs looking to dodge California’s proposed billionaire tax.
In 2022, Newsom ran ads in the Sunshine State urging Floridians opposed to policies like abortion restrictions to move west.
“Freedom is under attack in your state,” Newsom said in the ads, which were funded by his 2022 Newsom for Governor committee.
The following year, 5 million people watched a prime-time Fox News debate between Newsom and DeSantis in which they sparred over red- and blue-state policies regarding taxes, immigration, and public safety.
