AB 154: Taxation: federal conformity.

Under the Personal Income Tax Law and the Corporation Tax Law, various provisions of the federal Internal Revenue Code, as enacted as of a specified date, are referenced in various sections of the Revenue and Taxation Code. Those laws provide that for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2010, the specified date of those referenced Internal Revenue Code sections is January 1, 2009, unless otherwise specifically provided. Existing law requires, for any introduced bill that proposes changes in any of those dates, that the Franchise Tax Board prepare a complete analysis of the bill that describes all changes to state law that will automatically occur by reference to federal law as of the changed date. It further requires the Franchise Tax Board to immediately update and supplement that analysis upon any amendment to the bill, and requires that analysis be made available to the public and be submitted to the Legislature for publication in the daily journal of each house of the Legislature.

This bill would change the specified date of those referenced Internal Revenue Code sections to January 1, 2015, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2015, and thereby would make numerous substantive changes to both the Personal Income Tax Law and the Corporation Tax Law with respect to those areas of preexisting conformity that are subject to changes under federal laws enacted after January 1, 2009, and that have not been, or are not being, excepted or modified. This bill would make certain other changes in federal income tax laws applicable, with specified exceptions and modifications, and make specified supplemental, technical, or clarifying changes for purposes of the Personal Income Tax Law or the Corporation Tax Law, or both, or the administration of those laws, with respect to, among other things, tax credits, tax on specified distributions from Archer MSAs, income exclusions, reporting requirements, qualified tuition program investment direction, disclosure of information with respect to foreign financial assets, redemptions by foreign subsidiaries, listed property, extension of time for the payment of taxes, deductions for annual fees on branded prescription pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers, and penalty amounts related to understatements of tax or the failure to file specified returns or include specified information on returns.

This bill would also specify various dates on which specified provisions apply and repeal obsolete provisions.

This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.