Wikipedia says: "At 7.25%, California has the highest minimum statewide sales tax rate in the United States, which can total up to 10.50% with local sales taxes included."

Sales tax is not normally considered progressive.

With such a high sales tax, you'd expect to not also pay state income tax, and you'd expect low property taxes. This is not the case.

I don't think anybody should leave California. If you vote to create a disaster, you should stay to enjoy it. No other state wants you voting to replicate that.

The combined average sales tax is 8.6% in California (https://taxfoundation.org/state/california/) and 7% in Florida (https://taxfoundation.org/state/florida/). Both states exempt groceries. That's not much of a difference even if we zero in on sales taxes, but in any event it's entirely possible for California to have a relatively high tax burden on the lower classes while also having a relatively high progressive taxation scheme. Indeed, precisely because Florida has no income tax is also precisely why it's taxation scheme is less progressive than in California and possibly even regressive.

Further more, California has a state earned income credit, the highest in the nation: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-in...

The real issue in California is cost of housing, but that has almost nothing to do with taxation rates, per se. (Not trying to open a discussion about Prop 13 and property taxes....)

FWIW, I originally chose not to paste this citation regarding relative progressive schemes: https://taxfoundation.org/which-states-have-most-progressive... The methodology seemed highly suspicious to me. For example, if a state had a 100% taxation bracket at $1 trillion of income, then if I understand it correctly it would be the most progressive but quite obviously for a meaningless reason.