>Taxes paid by your employer aren't taxes you pay.

They have the same effect in that they reduce what employees take home in a given labour market. Employees are effectively paying them in the same way that people who buy alcohol/cigarettes effectively pay more in states with higher taxes on those items (even though the taxes are technically paid by the stores).

If CA eliminated all income taxes and instead had employers remit the same effective rate for all salaried employees, employers would just reduce salaries accordingly.

As another example, France's income tax rates cap out around/below some high tax US states. But France is still a comparatively high tax jurisdiction largely because they also impose massive payroll taxes on employers which effectively reduce employee wages.

Taxes paid by your employer are indeed paid by you. If your salary is X and the company is paying Y worth of payroll tax, then they're really paying X+Y for your services, which would all be salary going to you if not for the payroll tax.