By Dan Walters
Sacramento Bee

To borrow from the ``Three Bears" fable, are Californians taxed too little, taxed too much or taxed about right?

It's a question with particular relevance as politicians wrestle with stubborn state budget deficits. But its answer hinges not only on one's personal philosophy but markedly different sets of data about Californians' relative tax burden, and even disagreement on what constitutes the burden.

We do know that Californians are paying something north of $150 billion a year, around 10 percent of their personal incomes, in taxes to state and local governments. The Tax Foundation puts the burden at 10.5 percent in 2008, but since state tax collections have dropped sharply this year, the percentage may now be a bit lower.

The Public Policy Institute of California takes the calculation a bit further, saying state and local governments collect another $70 billion a year in various fees and assessments, which would raise the take to over 15 percent of personal income.

How does this taxation compare to other states? The Tax Foundation places California's 10.5 percent rate at sixth highest in the nation with New Jersey the highest at 11.6 percent. PPIC, meanwhile, says that when fees and other revenues are included, California is 18th highest, a bit higher than the national average.

So there we are. Californians' total burden for supporting state and local governments is definitely above average, in comparison to other states, but apparently shy of the highest ranks.

The calculations get even trickier when one tries to apportion that burden among various economic levels.

We do know that about half of the state's general fund revenues come from the personal income tax and that half of those income taxes come from the top 1 percent of taxpayers, a couple of hundred thousand families. It means that a quarter of the state's income is dependent on how well a handful of wealthy people are doing in the stock market, which makes the revenue stream very unpredictable.

Liberal groups such as the California Budget Project, however, contend that when indirect taxes are included, such as property taxes on rental housing, the poor pay higher percentages of their incomes than the affluent. They want more taxes on the wealthy and/or corporations to balance the budget, while those on the right contend that doing so will drive high-value taxpayers and their taxes out of the state.

A commission appointed by the governor and legislative leaders is studying the tax system with a goal of reducing revenue volatility. But smoothing out the revenue stream would require shifting more of it to middle- and even lower-income Californians.

One pending proposal would replace the sales tax with a ``net receipts tax" similar to the value-added taxes in European countries.

So are Californians overtaxed or undertaxed? There are lots of numbers but no easy answers. Like beauty, they are largely in the eyes of the beholders.

E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters@sacbee.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.