Starting October 1, the sales tax in South Pasadena is 11%. There is no place in the United States where this family’s paycheck and this family’s receipts get hit harder at the same time.
The increase comes from LA County Measure ER, the half-cent sales tax that narrowly passed in June now applies to every city in the county.
We added up every tax one average household pays in a year: federal income tax, state income tax, Social Security, Medicare, sales tax, gas tax, utility tax, the property tax buried in their rent, and the fees nobody names.
The total is about $44,600 a year, or $.28 cents of every dollar they earn.
The New Sales Tax Rates
South Pasadena: 11 percent. Pasadena, Alhambra, Glendale, San Gabriel, Arcadia, Monrovia, Sierra Madre and Temple City are the same.
• San Marino: 11.25 percent.
• Los Angeles city, including Highland Park and Eagle Rock: 10.25 percent.
• Highest in the state: Lancaster and Palmdale, 11.75 percent.
• Lowest in the state: 7.25 percent, in a handful of rural counties.
• South Pasadena is higher than Los Angeles because of the three-quarter-cent city sales tax voters approved in 2019. State plus county plus city equals 11.
Picture An Average Growing South Pasadena Family
Two adults, both 35, both with regular W-2 jobs. Combined income $160,000. One child in elementary school, so after-school care during the year and camp in the summer. They rent a decent two-bedroom in the South Pasadena for about $3,000 a month. Two ordinary cars, about 20,000 miles a year between them. Married, filing jointly, standard deduction, nothing fancy.
This year their refrigerator died. They bought a mid-range replacement for $1,950.
What follows is what this family pays in taxes in one year.
The Paychecks Taxed: About $34,800 gone before it hits the bank.
$14,400 Federal income tax, after the child tax credit and the child care credit.
$9,900 Social Security, 6.2 percent of every dollar they earn.
$2,300 Medicare, 1.45 percent of every dollar.
$6,100 California income tax.
$2,100 California State Disability Insurance. This is the quiet one. The rate went to 1.3% this year, up from 1.2 percent last year and 0.9 percent in 2023, and since 2024 there is no ceiling on it. Every raise, every bonus, every extra shift gets clipped.
There is a second number that belongs here even though it never touches their pay stub. Their employers pay a matching Social Security and Medicare tax on those same wages, plus federal and state unemployment tax. That is about $12,700 a year that, in a world without those taxes, would have been available to pay these two people. We leave it out of the family total below, but it is real money spent on this family’s labor that went to the government instead.
The Rent: About $3,600/yr Hidden In The Check To The Landlord
Renters do not get a property tax bill. Their landlord does, and the landlord builds it into the rent. On a South Pasadena rental unit that has changed hands in the last decade or so, the property tax and the county’s direct assessments on the tax bill run somewhere around $3,600 a year for a two bedroom unit. Older buildings under long-held Prop 13 assessments pay less; anything bought recently pays considerably more. We used the middle.
This family will never see a line that says property tax. They pay it anyway, twelve times a year built into their rent.
Sales Tax Chunk: About $3,070 In Sales Tax, Including The Refrigerator
After income taxes and rent, this family has roughly $89,000 a year to live on. A realistic slice of that, about $26,000, goes to things that are taxable in California: restaurant and takeout meals, clothes, shoes, a kid’s sports gear and school supplies, phones and laptops, furniture, cleaning supplies, pet supplies, the parts half of every car repair, toys, birthday presents, the stuff from Target you did not plan to buy. Groceries are exempt. Almost nothing else is.
At 11%, that is about $2,860 a year.
Now the refrigerator. At 11% sales tax, the financial dent $214.50. Had they driven three miles to an appliance store in Highland Park, inside the City of Los Angeles at 10.25%, the tax would have been $199.88.
The sales tax is the only tax on that receipt. It is not the only tax in that refrigerator. Since 2025 the federal government has charged a 50% tariff on the steel content of imported appliances, and most refrigerators sold in the United States are either imported or built from imported steel. (California is building a new steel mill as of this year – first time in 50 years) The manufacturer, the shipping company, the distributor and the store each paid corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax along the way and priced it in. A fair guess is that somewhere between $150 and $250 of the $1,950 sticker was already tax before the 11 percent was added on top. Nobody publishes that number, so we say plainly it is a guess.
The family’s sales tax total for the year, refrigerator included, about $3,070.
The Child: About $9,000 In Care, And The One Bill The State Does Not Tax
Two working parents and a kid in elementary school means somebody has to cover the hours between the last bell and the end of the workday, and all of summer. Around here that is an after-school program at roughly $500 a month for the school year and day camp at roughly $450 a week for eight weeks of summer. Call it $9,000 a year, and that is on the modest end for this area.
This is the one large expense in this family’s life with no sales tax on it. California does not tax services, and child care is a service. That does not mean it is tax-free. The people who run the program pay income tax and payroll tax on what they earn, the program pays rent or property tax on its space, and every one of those costs is inside the monthly fee. The family just never sees it.
What they do get is a little back. At their income, the federal child and dependent care credit is worth about $900 at tax time. California’s version of the credit cuts off at $100,000 of income, so this family gets nothing from the state. The $900 is already subtracted from the federal income tax line above.
So the child care line adds no new tax to the ledger. It is here because it is real, it is large, and it explains why a family earning $160,000 in South Pasadena does not feel like a family earning $160,000.
The Pump: About $1,150 On Gasoline
Two cars, 20,000 miles, call it 800 gallons a year. The government’s share of a gallon of gas in California is now around $1.40 to $1.50: the state excise tax of 63.4 cents, which rises automatically every July 1 without a vote; the federal excise tax of 18.4 cents; the state’s sales tax charged on top of the fuel price; the cap-and-trade cost and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard cost that refiners pass through; and the underground storage tank fee. None of it is on the pump display. On 800 gallons, about $1,150.
The Cars: About $650
Registration and vehicle license fees on two ordinary cars run about $650 a year. The license fee portion is a tax on the car’s value, collected by the DMV.
The Bills: About $850 In Utility Taxes And Surcharges
South Pasadena charges a 7.5 percent Utility Users Tax on electricity, gas, water, phone and cable service, and has since 1983. Most residents have paid it their whole adult lives and never noticed the line. On this family’s electric, gas and phone bills that comes to roughly $360 a year. Add the state surcharges built into electric rates and the federal, state and local charges that make up roughly 18 percent of a family wireless plan, and utility-related taxes come to about $850.
The Quiet Ones: About $520
$300 The state’s health plan tax, renewed in June, which now passes through to employer health insurance premiums. Estimates run around $100 per person per year.
$100 California’s 2.35 percent tax on insurance premiums, buried in the cost of two auto policies and a renter’s policy.
$120 Tire fees, e-waste fees, bottle and can deposits, bag fees, battery fees. Small, constant, and never refunded in full.
The Final Total
• Paycheck taxes $34,800
• Property tax inside the rent $3,600
• Sales tax, refrigerator included $3,070
• Gasoline taxes $1,150
• Vehicle fees $650
• Utility taxes and surcharges $850
• Health plan, insurance and small fees $520
About $44,600 a year in taxes for a growing family in the South Pasadena area.
• That is 28% of everything this family earns.
• More than they pay in rent.
• More than they spend on food, cars and child care combined.
It is the largest single expense in their lives, and it is the only major expense that never arrives as one bill.
Add the $12,700 their employers pay on their wages, and the government’s total take on this one household’s work and spending is about $57,300 a year, or roughly 36 cents of every dollar of value they produce.
We’re #1!! Highest Taxes in The Country
Los Angeles County now has the highest base sales tax rate of any county in California. California has the highest state income tax rate in the country, the highest gas tax in the country, and the only disability payroll tax with no ceiling. South Pasadena sits on top of all of it with its own city sales tax. There is no place in the United States where this family’s paycheck and this family’s receipts get hit harder at the same time.
And it keeps climbing. In 2019, before the pandemic, the sales tax in South Pasadena was 9.5 percent. Today it is 11. The state gas tax was 47.3 cents a gallon. Today it is 63.4. The SDI deduction was 1 percent and stopped at $118,000 of wages. Today it is 1.3 percent and never stops. A refrigerator like the one this family bought cost about $1,500 in 2019 and carried $142 in sales tax. Today it is $1,950 and carries $214.50. Same fridge. Seventy-two more dollars in tax, on top of $450 more in price.
Here is the part nobody explains. Every business in the chain pays these same taxes and puts them in the price. The store pays higher property tax, so the fridge costs more. The trucker pays the higher gas tax, so the fridge costs more. The manufacturer pays the tariff, so the fridge costs more. Then the family pays 11 percent on the higher price. Every time a tax goes up anywhere in the chain, this family pays it twice: once inside the price, and once on the receipt. That is why the sticker on everything in town keeps rising faster than the paychecks that have to cover it.
The Part That Is Easy To Miss
The same dollar gets taxed more than once. The dollar is taxed when it is earned. What is left is taxed when it is spent. What the store keeps is taxed as the store’s income. What the store pays its employees is taxed as their income. What they spend is taxed again. Every step down the line, the government takes a slice, and the slices add up to far more than any one rate suggests.
More Taxes Hitting In Three Months
The stack is not finished. On January 1, 2027, California’s sales tax applies for the first time to downloaded software and subscription services, at the full local rate, which means the family’s cloud storage, streaming tools and the kid’s school software get the 11 percent too. The gas excise tax steps up again next July 1. The SDI rate is set every year and has gone up four years running. And on November 3, county and state voters will decide on more.
We will keep the ledger current. For now, the number for one ordinary, established, growing family in South Pasadena is about $44,600 a year, and today it went up.
How We Got These Numbers
Income taxes were calculated on $160,000 of combined W-2 wages, married filing jointly, standard deduction, one child, using 2026 federal and California brackets, with the federal child tax credit and child and dependent care credit applied. Payroll taxes use the 2026 rates, including California’s 1.3 percent SDI with no wage ceiling. Sales tax uses the CDTFA rate sheet operative October 1, 2026. Property tax inside the rent, embedded taxes in the refrigerator and fuel pass-through costs are estimates and are labeled as such. Every figure is rounded. Readers who run their own numbers and land higher are not wrong; this family was built to be ordinary, not extreme.
YOUR VOTE MATTERS: Elections & New Tax Measures Are On The Ballot November 3rd This Year. Read Your Ballot Carefully. Vote Wisely.
