California is bad at tracking whether its Tax Breaks Work

According to a national study by Pew Charitable Trusts, California does a horrible job of tracking the impact of the tax breaks and credits that it provides each year to businesses. Pew Charitable Trusts is a non-partisan, independent, non-governmental organization that was founded in 1948. Pew Charitable Trusts ranked California among the lowest 23 states in terms of tracking the effectiveness of tax breaks and credits for businesses. Josh Goodman, one of the authors of the Pew report, stated:

Tax incentives are really important decisions that states make in terms of trying to grow their economy, create jobs, attract new businesses, and they’re also major budget commitments. So, what we’ve found is that states need to be carefully measuring the results of their incentives with a regular, consistent process. And that’s what California lacks right now.

Goodman claims that lawmakers do track or have tracked some programs, such as the film incentive, but it is not consistent. Hopefully, some more consistent tracking will be done so that lawmakers can know what tax incentives are more effective than other to make adjustments where needed.

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