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Everything’s Bigger in Texas — Including Taxes, Which Are Outpacing CaliforniaTexas has never lacked self-belief, especially when it comes to touting tax advantages it has over other states. Well, not so fast, Lone Star Staters — you could be paying higher taxes than even Californians.As the Houston Chronicle reported, a graphic shared on Reddit’s main economic forum illustrated how the vast majority of Texans pay more in taxes than Californians do. That’s the case even though Texas does not levy a state income tax on individuals (and California does).The graphic contained 2018 data from the nonprofit Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which gathered stats from a variety of sources: IRS income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey.According to the ITEP’s research, Texans whose salaries fall into the lowest 20% of income earners — those who earn less than $20,900 a year — pay about 13% of their income in state and local taxes. By comparison, Californians in the bottom 20% (who earn less than $23,200 annually) pay a rate of 10.5%.That’s not the only income group where taxes are higher in Texas than California, either: The middle 20% of earners in Texas — making $35,800 to $56,000 a year — pay 9.7% in state and local taxes .Meanwhile, it’s 8.9% for middle income earners in Californian, whose pay ranges from $39,100 to $62,300 a year.About the only Texans who fare better than Californians are the wealthy. The top 1% of earners in Texas — those making $617,900 or more annually — only pay 3.1% of their income in state and local taxes. That compares to a rate of 12.4% for top earners in California, who make $714,400 or more per year.Although the ITEP data is from four years ago, taxes in Texas are pretty much the same now as they were then, according to Robert Peroni, a tax professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.