The 2026-27 Budget: CDTFA’s Cannabis and Tobacco Programs

Feb 23, 2026 - Two Main Questions for the Legislature. These proposals raise several issues for the Legislature to consider. Our analysis of these issues in the next two sections revolves around two overarching questions: How much should CDTFA spend on cannabis and tobacco enforcement?
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5132

The 2026-27 Budget: California Competes Extension

Mar 18, 2026 - Second, any unawarded credits from the previous fiscal year can be added to the pool of available credits for the current fiscal year. Credit Pool Has Ballooned to over $923  million for the Current Year.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5162

The 2026-27 Budget: State Mandate—Disclosure Requirements and Deferral of Property Taxation

Feb 19, 2026 - The Commission determined that Los Angeles County incurred reimbursable costs processing deferment requests and adding the required disclosure to property tax bills. The Commission determined that the county incurred a total amount of about $30,000 in back-year costs (incurred between 2022 and 2024), and about $8,000 in ongoing costs thereafter.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5130

The 2025-26 Budget: CDTFA’s Tobacco Programs

Feb 14, 2025 - Questions for Legislative Oversight As budget subcommittees conduct oversight over CDTFA ’s tobacco programs, they may wish to ask the following questions. What are the major ways that consumers obtain untaxed tobacco products?
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4966

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - In the first step, we estimate a model that uses each worker ’s observed characteristics to predict the probability that they respond to the wage questions. Similar to the use of survey weights described above, this model relies on the assumption that responses to the wage questions are conditionally missing at random.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/4

Improving California’s Unemployment Insurance Program

Aug 8, 2022 - Unusual Application Questions Can Create Confusion. The UI application includes questions that affect eligibility for a very small number of applicants yet add complexity for all applicants. The unusual questions relate to obscure program rules.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4615

The 2021-22 Budget: Business Tax Incentives

Jan 28, 2021 - The idea of adding grants to California Competes raises questions that require significant Legislative deliberation. Due to these concerns and others, we suggest that the Legislature instead focus on expanding the Main Street Credit proposal.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4327

The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Other Provisions

Oct 16, 2025 - Control Sections 90.00 and 90.01 During the special session called by the Governor, the Legislature added Control Sections 90.00 and 90.01 to the 2024-25 Budget Act providing up to $2.5  billion one-time from the General Fund for response and recovery costs related to the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5081

The 2025-26 Budget: Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development

Mar 18, 2025 - If the Legislature approves this proposal, we recommend adding explicit requi rements to assess a grant applicant ’s inability to use tax credits. California Regional Initiative for Social Enterprises Grant Program.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5018

The 2025-26 Budget: California’s Film Tax Credit

Feb 28, 2025 - While the film tax credit likely increases the size of California ’s film industry, a much more difficult question to answer is whether it grows the state ’s economy as a whole. There is currently no compelling evidence to suggest that film tax credits have a positive effect on the size of the state ’s economy overall, after considering two important offsetting factors.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5000