Local Sales Tax Rebates in 2023-24

Sep 16, 2025 - For example, to encourage a retailer to set up shop in a city, the city could refund half of the Bradley-Burns tax paid by the retailer. If retailers respond strongly to these rebates, then cities providing them could end up with higher revenues.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5074

Local Sales Tax Rebates in 2023-24 [Publication Details]

Sep 16, 2025 - Some of California's local governments offer partial sales tax rebates to try to boost the amount of taxable sales within their borders. In 2023-24, these rebates totaled $140 million. In this post, we describe the distribution of rebate payments across cities and counties. We also examine some economic and demographic characteristics of rebate-paying jurisdictions.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/5074

Building Reserves to Prepare for a Recession

Mar 7, 2018 - By most measures, the recession of the early 1990s was more severe than the dot ‑com bust in the early 2000s. For example, unemployment in California reached 9. 7  p ercent in mid ‑ to late ‑1992, but peaked at 6. 9  p ercent after the dot ‑com bust.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3769

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - Many Cities Have Higher Minimum Wages. Many California cities —and the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and San Mateo County —set minimum wages that exceed the $16-per-hour statewide minimum.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878

The 2018-19 May Revision: LAO Economic Outlook

May 12, 2018 - The typical PE ratio since 1990 is 21 (19 if the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s is excluded). Similar to the price-to-earnings ratio, the home price-to-rent ratio is used to gauge if home prices are in line with underlying demand for housing.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3829

Common Claims About Proposition 13

Sep 19, 2016 - We then compared each city ’s land use decisions over the last decade to its comparison city. The results are summarized in Figure  19. As the figure shows, cities that were more reliant on sales taxes were slightly more likely to rezone more land for retail uses than their comparison city.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3497

Do Communities Adequately Plan for Housing?

Mar 8, 2017 - The Legislature could modify existing state funding allocations to cities and counties so that they are distributed based on population growth. Currently, however, discretionary state allocations to cities and counties are minor, representing a very small portion of city and county funding.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3605

Statewide Minimum Wage Increasing in January

Dec 6, 2016 - Most of these local governments are cities in the Bay Area. The figure below shows which Bay Area cities already have minimum wages that will be higher than $10.50 per hour on January 1 st . (Additionally, San Diego ’s minimum wage —not pictured —will be $11.50 per hour.)
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3512

A Key Interaction Between Sales Taxes and Other Taxes on Cannabis Retailers

Dec 17, 2019 - Many cities levy a “business tax ” or “business license tax ” that applies to a wide range of businesses, including cannabis businesses. The tax rate generally is a specified percentage of sales, also known as gross receipts.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4124

How Will Aging Baby Boomers Affect Future Property Tax Revenues?

Jun 20, 2017 - Cities in this group —such as Lakewood, Mountain View, and Santa Clara —have experienced high home price growth but have fewer older homeowners. Potential revenues gain also are moderate for these cities.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3693