Updating California’s Conformity to US Tax Laws on Deck in 2024

California is almost nine years behind in conforming to most federal tax law changes—its longest stretch ever—and interest is mounting to fix that with legislation in 2024, practitioners and a legislative staff member said Friday.

With a few exceptions, California follows the federal Internal Revenue Code as of Jan. 1, 2015, reflecting the last time lawmakers passed a measure to conform broadly to federal tax law. Before 2015, lawmakers enacted similar conformity measures every few years, sometimes even annually.

California lawmakers did enact several federal tax relief items during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as treatment of forgiven Paycheck Protection ...