January 28, 2021 - The Governor’s budget proposes several changes to taxation to support businesses. Two key factors for evaluating these proposals are: (1) which level of government would forgo revenue; and (2) which businesses would receive assistance. Based on these criteria and others, we recommend that the Legislature prioritize expansion of the Main Street credit, explore alternative structures for an elective S Corporation tax, and reject the proposed one-time expansions of the CAEATFA exclusion and California Competes.
June 21, 2012 - Letter to Hon. Lois Wolk, Chair of Senate Governance and Finance Committee, providing an evaluation of the February 2012 report, "Economic and Production Impacts of the 2009 California Film and Television Tax Credit."
October 19, 2011 - Alternative Energy Manufacturing Sales and Use Tax Exclusion (SB 71) Program
February 1, 2021 - In this report, we offer the Legislature guidance on how to evaluate fiscal stimulus proposals. We pose six key questions to ask when assessing specific proposals and provide specific elements that can be incorporated into proposals to increase their potential effectiveness.
November 16, 2007 - Tax expenditure programs (TEPs) are features of the tax code—including credits, deductions, exclusions, and exemptions—that enable a targeted set of taxpayers to reduce their taxes relative to what they would pay under a “basic” tax-law structure. The state’s TEPs number in the hundreds and are valued in the tens of billions of dollars annually, and are used mostly to encourage certain types of behavior or provide financial assistance to taxpayers. This report provides information on newly enacted TEPs and reviews selected existing TEPs as to their effectiveness and efficiency. One of these is the mortgage interest deduction, valued at about $5 billion yearly. This program is found to be an inefficient means of promoting home ownership, and options are offered for improving it, including capping the deduction amount or replacing it with a targeted tax credit.
March 4, 2010 - This responds to Senator Cogdill's request for an analysis of the net impact on jobs in California that would occur as a result of the implementation of AB 32 (Núñez), the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006. In our response, we briefly summarize the basic provisions of AB 32 and its planned implementation through the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) Scoping Plan (SP), discuss the avenues by which the SP would potentially affect California jobs, and present the jobs-related effects of the SP as estimated by CARB. We then comment on CARB’s analysis and offer our own view about how the SP might affect jobs.
September 29, 2016 -
In this report, as required by law, we evaluate the economic effects and the administration of the first film tax credit program passed in 2009. We find that about one–third of the film and television projects receiving incentives under this program would probably have been made in California anyway. We suspect that this level of “windfall benefits” to some credit recipients may be low compared to other tax credits, which would suggest that the first film tax credit program targeted the types of production vulnerable to being filmed outside the state relatively well.
Also see these four short videos that highlight findings from this report.
February 23, 1994 - General Fund revenues are expected to support 73 percent of the proposed $55.6 billion total 1994-95 spending plan. This is a decline from the 78 percent share these revenues represented in fiscal year 1992-93, in part due to the continuing slow growth of General Fund revenues relative to special fund revenues, but primarily because of past and proposed shifts of revenues from the General Fund to special fund accounts.
January 25, 2001 - Based on our findings, we recommend that the Legislature remove the existing sunset for the current partial Sales and Use Tax (SUT) exemption for bunker fuel sales, and make the exemption permanent. This action would result in treating bunker fuel sales similarly to other export sales and place California ports on par with other U.S. out-of-state ports. We also recommend that the Legislature review the appropriateness of current SUT treatment of fuel sales to common carriers other than vessels, including air and rail common carriers.
December 19, 2012 - California currently maintains over a dozen major programs that are intended to support the development of energy efficiency and alternative energy in the state. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the state has spent a combined total of roughly $15 billion on such efforts. In response to the Supplemental Report of the 2012-13 Budget Package, this report provides an overview of these different programs, as well as a preliminary assessment of them in terms of priority, overlap, and redundancy. We find that the state currently lacks a comprehensive framework that fully coordinates the state's energy incentive programs to help ensure that the state’s goals are being achieved in the most cost-effective manner. The absence of such a comprehensive framework (1) results in some level of program duplication, (2) results in some departments making policy choices that may not be aligned to legislative priorities, and (3) makes it difficult to compare effectiveness across programs. As a result, we recommend that the Legislature develop a comprehensive strategy for meeting the state’s energy efficiency and alternative energy objectives. In general, the comprehensive strategy should specify: (1) the state’s energy efficiency and alternative energy goals, (2) how programs should fit together to achieve the state’s goals, and (3) how program effectiveness will be measured.