Half a million people fled California for Texas and Florida last year.
Gavin Newsom flew to Austin anyway – and told Texans they were the ones paying too much in taxes.
DeSantis just handed him the receipt.
What Newsom Actually Said
Newsom took the stage at SXSW on Sunday with a message for the Texans in the room.
"Texas taxes poor folks more than we tax our richest," he told the crowd. "Florida is the other regressive tax state. Your middle class pays more taxes in Texas than our middle class in California."
He posted it to X the next morning. "Fox News refuses to report the truth: Texas and Florida are the REAL high-tax states."
DeSantis responded within hours.
"There are lies, damned lies and statistics," DeSantis wrote. "Then there is whatever you'd call the claim that California has lower taxes than Florida. Even people who like California governance acknowledge CA is a very high tax state: highest sales, income and gas taxes in the nation."
RealClearPolitics co-founder Tom Bevan called it "a blatant, verifiable falsehood" – and attached the WalletHub numbers.
The Numbers That Ended the Argument
WalletHub's 2025 analysis of total state and local tax burden ranked California 4th highest in the nation at 11.0% of personal income.
Texas ranked 40th at 7.77%.
Florida ranked 45th at just 6.49%.
California's total tax burden is nearly 70% higher than Florida's.
That's not a framing dispute. That's a different planet.
The Tax Foundation ranked California 48th in overall tax competitiveness in 2026 – accounting for corporate, income, and sales taxes combined.
https://twitter.com/FoxBusiness/status/2033949675884073088?s=20
Florida and Texas were ranked far higher, reflecting substantially lower overall burdens.
Tax Foundation fellow Jared Walczak didn't mince words. "States like Florida and Texas have much lower tax burdens overall. It flies in the face of people's revealed preferences – they are choosing states with lower income taxes in particular. Migration rates tell the story."
He's right. California's top income tax rate sits at 13.3% – highest in the country.
Texas and Florida have zero income tax. Zero.
What Newsom Buried in the Fine Print
Here's what Newsom is hiding in the fine print.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the bottom 20% of earners pay a slightly larger share of income in taxes in Florida and Texas than in California.
That's because California uses refundable tax credits to offset its sales and excise taxes at the low end of the income ladder.
That's the entire basis for his claim.
What he didn't mention: California has the third-highest cost of living in the country. Sales taxes in parts of Los Angeles County hit 11.2%.
Gas taxes run $0.61 per gallon.
And new homebuyers in California face enormous effective property tax obligations driven by sky-high home values – even under Prop 13's protections, which David Kline of CalTax noted force "others to bear the brunt."
Kline made it simple: "If you ask any Californian who travels to another state what they paid in taxes, I think you will have agreement that California's are higher."
https://twitter.com/NewsNew97351204/status/2031876972196798874?s=20
Newsom's argument works only if you strip out every cost that actually hits Californians in the wallet – and then pretend the rest doesn't exist.
239,000 Californians Voted With Their Moving Trucks
The Census Bureau confirmed 239,000 more people left California for other states than moved in during 2024.
The top destinations were Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
Over 37,000 Californians moved to Texas in a single 12-month period between June 2024 and May 2025.
Only 14,500 Texans moved the other direction.
According to U-Haul's 2025 Growth Index, California had the greatest out-migration of any state for the sixth consecutive year.
The California-to-Texas corridor is the largest interstate migration route in the entire country.
Newsom was surrounded by people who made that choice. He told them they were wrong.
What This Is Really About
Newsom told SXSW he'll run for president if Democrats flip the House in 2026.
https://twitter.com/NahBabyNahNah/status/2033671611799282063?s=20
This isn't a tax argument. It's a campaign preview.
He knows he'll face California's record on a national debate stage – the highest income taxes in America, a cost-of-living crisis that drove away hundreds of thousands of residents, and a business exodus that includes Tesla, Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Chevron.
So he's building a counter-narrative now, before the scrutiny arrives.
The math doesn't support it. The migration data doesn't support it.
And his own father-in-law – whom DeSantis called out by name in their 2023 Fox News debate – moved to Florida and told people it was better governed, safer, and cheaper.
Newsom's entire argument depends on voters never running the actual numbers.
DeSantis just ran them.
Sources:
- Jared Walczak, "California Tax Competitiveness," Tax Foundation, 2026.
- "Tax Burden by State (2025)," WalletHub, 2025.
- "U-Haul Growth Index: Texas Back on Top as No. 1 Growth State of 2025," U-Haul, January 5, 2026.
- Annie Gaus, "Newsom flamed for claim California taxes lower than Texas, Florida," New York Post, March 16, 2026.
- "Newsom renews claim Texas, Florida are 'high-tax' states, critics dispute framing," Fox Business, March 17, 2026.
- "Exclusive: More Floridians, Californians moving to Texas than reverse," The Center Square, December 28, 2025.
