Walters: It’s time to look at the high costs of California’s tax loopholes

Among the hundreds of bills introduced in every session of the California Legislature, a few deal with what state officials term “tax expenditures,” which requires some explanation.

The term refers to provisions in personal and corporate income taxes and sales taxes that exempt specific financial transactions from levies that otherwise would be applied. They have exactly the same fiscal effect as direct appropriations in the budget, which is why they are dubbed “expenditures.”

While...