Having lived and paid property tax in both states, I can assure you California has Texas beat.
I registered my Geo Metro for something like $56 the first year I was in Texas, and I only had to pay for a safety inspection, not an emissions test. I think registration on a brand new Toyota Highlander was something like $180. Try that in California. My marginal income tax rate in California was 9%. In Texas is was 0%. All taxes and fees are inter-related. Singling one tax/fee out as an advantage is bogus.
One of the things that attracted me to Texas was I could get out of my tiny condo and buy a spacious house without increasing my mortgage. My overall quality of life went way up when I moved, even though certain elements were degraded. And Texans were just plan better people to be around, in general.
The NappyOne
This was from December 2011... but nothing has changed since.
Plano, Texas, tops list of America’s safest cities
Plano, Texas, has some pretty ho-hum claims to fame: It’s home to junk-food headquarters Frito-Lay and the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, for starters, as well as to retail giant J.C. Penney. But it’s also America’s safest city by our determination, and that’s nothing to yawn at.
Plano, a city of 278,000 that’s just outside Dallas, boasts the lowest violent crime rate of the cities we looked at and the sixth-lowest traffic fatality rate, putting it tops on our list for the second year in a row. The Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nev., and Honolulu come in second and third, respectively.
So what makes these metropolises oases of relative tranquility? Wealth is one key factor.
“One of the underlying things, in terms of a city’s safety, would be a very strong tax base, as there are a number of services that are reliant on it,” notes Scott B. Clark, president of the New York-based Risk and Insurance Management Society. “That includes an effective, well-staffed police department, fire department and school system.”
The median household income in Plano is $79,234, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 60 percent above the national average, and 8.1 percent of residents are below the poverty line, compared to a national rate of 15.1 percent. The city is also home to a number of Fortune 500 companies.
“Plano is a very clean, affluent suburb with no inner city per se,” says John Worrall, head of the criminology program at the University of Texas at Dallas. “Plus it has one of the few police departments in the U.S. that require four-year degrees. I don’t know that there is research to back up its making things safer, but it makes Plano unique.”
Plano boasts strong citizen involvement in public safety: the U.S. Department of Justice honored the city last year with a National Award for Excellence in Neighborhood Watch. Plano Police Chief Greg Rushin says his department works with 194 volunteers who help with tasks from patrolling neighborhoods to manning observation towers in public places and monitoring security camera feeds.