some familiarity with running a small business in Ca. : Every little thing your business does potentially has some permitting, licensing fees, taxes, and/or approvals necessary at the local, county, or state levels, with lots of complicated form filling needed and a DMV level of service & timeliness in response. If you have a physical presence you're doubly screwed, because that potentially ropes in local land-use, health and labor departments, which can take months to turn around an approval. Its basically impossible to keep in compliance unless you have dedicated lawyers and accountants looking at each project.

My understanding is that Texas doesn't have a lot of that or at least its minimized.

The reason "business environment" can't be duplicated or reversed because it's like a legal equivalent of tech debt code rot where also a large group of ops employees (politically influential bureaucrats) earn their life's income on the busy work the system creates.

To add to what others have said: No state income tax. Relaxed zoning laws (compared to CA).

It's mainly the stuff that's pro-employee in California (wrt non-compete and what have you) are pro-employer in Texas.

Primarily, from my understanding, it's related to diminished permitting and (most importantly) very lax zoning laws.

They have low taxes in comparison to other states, partially because they can rely on taxes and licensing fees on mineral extraction (oil) to fund things that other states would have to fund thru other taxes.

Texas is one of the highest tax states in the union. Simply because there is no income tax does not imply low taxation.

For instance, property taxes in Williamson County (Austin suburb, extremely conservative, are at 3.08% for new construction homes. Compare that to any other state.

... that's compared to +1.5% in SF/Alameda on houses 2-3x the cost and worse size/quality (and up to a 1.5% transfer tax in some cities).

California has the highest state income tax, near top sales tax rates and if you are a recent home buyer some of the highest absolute property taxes (thanks to the price dynamic described above). Plus you get screwed on federal SALT caps, mortgage interest deduction and maybe AMT.

I'll gladly take your 3% if there were more options for interesting places to work and it was not 110 degrees in the summer.

That's comparable to the 2-3% in suburban Illinois (where I live now) and Ohio (where my family is from) and both of those states also have state income tax on top of that.

By this ranking, the tax burden in Texas is 33rd out of 50 states so it's not a low tax state, but it is definitely on the lower tax end of the spectrum. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...

Cheap housing, lots of land.