The 2026-27 Budget: California Competes Extension

Mar 18, 2026 - Parallel Grant Program Added in Some Years. Because the tax credit is nonrefundable, businesses without a significant California tax liability cannot benefit from the incentive it provides. Two types of businesses fall under this category.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5162

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

Feb 23, 2026 - On some level, this is intr iguing: why not allocate program costs to all funds that benefit, regardless of whether those benefits are direct or indirect? In practice, allocating tax and fee program costs based on indirect benefits can create several problems: The spillover effects of each program on all other programs can be very difficult to quantify credibly.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5132

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

Overview of Efforts to Modernize EDD’s Benefit Systems [Publication Details]

Feb 24, 2026 - Overview of Efforts to Modernize EDD’s Benefit Systems [Publication Details] Translate Our Website This Google ™ translation feature provided on the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) website is for informational purposes only.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/5135

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 California Spending Plan: Other Provisions

Oct 16, 2025 - The budget package excludes the first $20,000 of military retirement benefits, including retirement pay and survivor benefits, from state income taxation starting in tax year 2025. This exclusion is limited to individual taxpayers with less than $125,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) or joint taxpayers with less than $250,000 in AGI.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5081

Updating the California Necessities Index

Aug 14, 2025 - Therefore, using the CA CPI ‑U or CA CPI ‑W to adjust payments would likely result in significantly different benefit increases in some years relative to the CNI. Small Tweaks to CNI Lead to Only Small Differences.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5065

Fixing Unemployment Insurance

Dec 2, 2024 - As Figure  10 shows with some illustrative numbers, this employment tax raises the cost of adding a new employee to a business and that cost is proportionately higher for a low wage worker than a high wage worker.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4943

Updating the California Necessities Index [Publication Details]

Aug 14, 2025 - Recent changes were made to the publication of statistics required to calculate the California Necessities Index, which is used to adjust certain benefit rates and cost-of-living adjustments. In this brief, we provide details on the changes and evaluate alternatives for the index that require only currently available data and conform to the original intent of the index.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/5065

The 2023-24 Budget: California's Film Tax Credit

Feb 28, 2023 - In addition to the added requirements of Program 2.0, production companies must have a written policy against sexual harassment and provide a summary of programs to increase workplace diversity. a Only $230 million was available in the first year of Program 2.0 because it was concurrent with the first credit.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4713