This study examined the economic, demographic, and climate impact of environmental tax reform in California through three separate carbon tax price points ($50/ton, $100/ton, $200/ton) and two scenarios aimed to return revenue without increasing spending. Those modeled scenarios are an “across-the-board” tax cut to income, sales, and corporation taxes and a “fee-and-dividend” approach paid out to households modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund. These scenarios were run with a combination of the REMI PI+ model and the Carbon Tax Analysis Model and their synchronized efforts revealed that a “tax swap” could mean an additional 300,000 jobs by 2035, an extra $18 billion in GDP, an additional $16 billion in annual income, and carbon emissions at less than 75% of 1990 levels. A main factor considered by researchers was the need to improve environmental aspects of the region while leaving the competitiveness levels of Californian firms untouched.
