California also has lots of high paid immigrants and native born people paying income taxes. Of course, everyone who buys things pays sales tax, so the claim that “poor people do not pay taxes” is false, unless they are in prison. Unfortunately, poorly thought out “tough on crime” laws enacted during the crime wave that peaked in the early 1990s put lots of people in prison inefficiently (i.e. in terms of amount of prison space used relative to the number and severity of crimes prevented), so prison spending has been one of the big budget busters.
California has also been a net giver in terms of taxes paid to the national government relative to national government spending.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/federal-taxes-paid-vs-federal-spending-received-state-1981-2005