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, 2005, the specified date of those referenced Internal Revenue Code sections is January 1, 2005, 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, 2009, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2009, 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, 2005, 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, with respect to, among other things, the tax treatment of qualifying income of publically traded partnerships certain disaster mitigation payments, depreciation of electric transmission property and natural gas gathering lines, nuclear decommissioning cost provisions, a small refiner exception to oil depletion deduction, recapture rules for amortizable Section 197 intangibles, amortization of expenses incurred in creating or acquiring music or music copyrights, treatment of certain self-created musical works and qualified retirement income, funding for self-employed defined benefit pension plans and for multiemployer defined benefit pension plans, withdrawals from retirement plans for individuals called to active duty, waiver of an early withdrawal penalty tax on certain distributions of pension plans for public safety employees, allowance of additional IRA payments in certain bankruptcy cases, inflation indexing of gross income limitations on certain retirement savings incentives, treatment of death benefits from corporate-owned life insurance, exemption of income from leveraged real estate held by church plans, gratuitous transfer for benefits of employees, exclusion from gross income with respect to a specified tragic event, discharge of qualified principal residence indebtedness, penalties for bad checks, penalty for understatement of taxpayer's liability by a tax preparer, frivolous tax submissions, exclusion of gain from sale of principal residence by certain employees of the intelligence community, sale of property by judicial officers, excise tax on UBTI of charitable remainder trusts, certain listed and reportable transactions provisions, the taxation of certain settlement funds, the active business requirement, loans to qualified continuing care facilities, exception from suspension rules, and specified federal acts. This bill would also increase the age of children whose unearned income is taxed as if a parent's income, would require a penalty to be imposed for a claim or credit made for an excessive amount, would increase the penalty for willful failure to file specified returns, and would revise, in modified conformity with the federal income tax laws, various provisions applicable to tax-exempt organizations. This bill would also specify various dates on which specified provisions apply, make findings and declarations that certain provisions are declaratory of existing law, specify the intent and operation in the application of provisions conforming to various federal acts, repeal obsolete provisions, and declare that the retroactive application of specified provisions serves public purposes, as defined. This bill would incorporate changes made by AB 692 and SB 401 that would become operative if AB 692, SB 401, or both bills are enacted and this bill is enacted after AB 692, SB 401, or both bills. This bill would take effect immediately as a tax levy.