Honestly, coming from a third world country where I got taxed more and having had to work in Austin and Atlanta before on previous jobs, taxes are the least of my complains for California. Yeah they should fix property taxes... but my main complaint is that even though all politicians like speaking a mouthful about helping the poor and how broken healthcare is, every single government program that's supposed to help the mentally ill is utterly and completely broken beyond belief. And I'm saying this coming from Argentina that as a country has around the same population and way less GDP.
Literally the only thing about California that doesn't feel "first wordly" as all the nice places in Europe I've been to is how it deals with people that need mental health or that have housing issues. I tried discussing this with every other politician I meet or something but besides condescending smiles because of the perceived trauma they think growing up in Latin America caused (it didn't) I never get any iota of acknowledgement that something in the world is wrong. Except for the Republicans, which is the only problem in the US, apparently.
Not a lot of people hitting that regularly, but I imagine it can sting a little if you've got a more proletarian salary normally and are hitting that region just once because of say, a start up liquidity windfall
How so? I put a salary of $300k in SF here, and came up with 38%: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#c0piT.... Obviously Fremont workers do not need to live in SF.