[kelnos]

I find it weird that people quote top-tax-bracket rates and try to use tha tto directly compare state taxes.

That's nonsensical. You need to compare the effective tax rate that people pay.

When I was making bank at tech, sure, I was in CA's top tax bracket. But I never paid that rate across all my income. My effective tax rate was quite a bit lower.

[acdha]

> But I never paid that rate across all my income. My effective tax rate was quite a bit lower.

This seems to be a strangely common cognitive pitfall - I’ve seen so many people talk about progressive tax rates that way, even claiming that a raise would cost them money, and it’s not like this is a secret or requires advanced math skills.

[borski]

But it does require thinking about more than just the headline. A lot of people are lazy (I don’t mean that as a moral issue, just literally) and don’t want to think for themselves, so often they simply parrot.

[jjallen]

The top tax bracket is more like 50% all in. So I was not quoting the top one with 40%.