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CA Agency, that Collects $60 Billion in Taxes Per Year, is in Hot Water!

California’s State Board of Equalization (BOE) – the agency that collects one third of the golden state’s taxes – is due for a much-needed makeover. And that’s per someone who is currently the longest-serving member of the BOE. State Controller Betty Yee recently called for legislators to gut the BOE of most of its authority and to start fresh with a new state department that would oversee more than 30 tax and fee programs.

Yee’s proposal comes on the heels of the State Department of Finance’s recent audit of the BOE, which found the agency riddled with problems such as flawed accounting, increased spending on political/promotional events that are a far cry from tax collection, and staff afraid of defying elected officials.

The BOE, which collects around $60 billion in taxes each year, consists of four publicly elected members who each represent a district in four-year terms, and the State Controller, who is elected on a state-wide basis. Yee, currently serving in the latter post after almost a decade as a district member, stated “I look at the BOE and it’s entrusted with making sure our tax dollars get to the right place, and clearly its falling short in this critical mission.”

And she’s not the only BOE member calling for changes. At the end of March, Fiona Ma of the second district wrote a letter to Governor Brown requesting that he appoint a public trustee to manage the BOE, based on info from the same audit cited by Yee.

However, not all BOE members agree with the audit’s findings: Jerome Horton (3^rd District) and Diane Harkey (4^th District) have labeled the report as inaccurate. Interestingly, they’re the two Board members who were cited in the audit as arranging outreach events in their districts that were not related to what the BOE should actually be doing.

Yee’s proposal calls for more than just applying some concealer on the BOE’s issues and calling it a day. Under her plan, the agency would lose oversight of both sales and use taxes, along with 30+ revenue-generating programs it currently manages. The result would be approximately 80 percent of the agency’s portfolio and employees transitioning to a different revenue department. The BOE would still manage property taxes around California, which is what it was originally created to do back in 1879.

Whether this will actually happen is up in the air right now. Yee will have to persuade both lawmakers and Gov. Brown to enact her proposal. What is clear is that the California Board of Equalization needs to win back the trust of the state’s taxpayers and continuing down the same path just isn’t going to cut it.