Case Study: California Franchise Tax Board achieves $2B in additional state revenue and high‑volume tax processing with Pegasystems (Pega for Government)

California Generates $2 Billion for Citizen Services

California Franchise Tax Board (CA FTB), which collects the bulk of California’s revenue for citizen services, faced a large “tax gap” caused by inaccurate or unpaid returns (about 20% of cases). At peak season the agency needed to process massive volumes—up to 960,000 returns per day and 16 million returns in under four months—while reducing costs and improving the customer experience.

CA FTB launched the Enterprise Data to Revenue (EDR) project and deployed the Pega for Government platform to automate paper correspondence and end-to-end tax-return processing. The platform automatically analyzed and validated returns (handling four million in one week without service issues), cut paper-based work, boosted staff productivity, automated about one million returns, and helped generate more than $2 billion in additional state revenue.

California Franchise Tax Board

Cathy Cleek

CIO