> not accounting for taxes
That would be a large mistake. California has huge income taxes, Texas none. It's not just state taxes, a doubling of your income puts all that additional income in a much higher federal tax bracket.
I would expect renting a parking spot in SF to cost a pretty penny, too.
> Because the U.S. tax system is a progressive one, as income rises, increasingly higher taxes are imposed. But those in the highest bracket don’t pay the highest rate on all their income. For example, for 2017 taxes, single individuals pay 39.6% only on income above $418,401 (above $470,001 for married filing jointly); the lower tax rates are levied at the income brackets below that amount, as shown in the table below.
What he is saying is that if you make $100k in Houston and $250k in SF, the extra $150k is tax entirely at the higher rate.
The part above $128K is actually taxed at a lower rate; crossing the Social Security maximum taxed earnings level (and thus losing 6.2% in marginal tax on income) more than makes up for the 5% higher marginal income tax rate.
24% $82,501 to $157,500
32% $157,501 to $200,000
35% $200,001 to $500,000
I.e. 8% to 13%, not 5%.
He said his salary would be twice as high in SF, so for a 100k salary in Houston, we're talking about 200k - 41k vs 100k - 17k, which is roughly a 70k difference (actually closer to 80k, but I wanted to make a conservative guess).
Oh wait I misread that as some people find great weather in the pacific northwest.
I wouldn't count on it. Seattle just passed a city income tax, despite it being against the state Constitution, trying to gerrymander it around the wording of the Constitution. At the state level, the Democrats in the last election got control of both houses of the legislature, as well as the governorship. High on their agenda is finding a way to tax income.