Court Opinion

ID: 9559585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:31:59.404374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:39.114507
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur in the judgment of the majority that the Court of Appeal’s formulation of the standard of review for tax annotations, the summaries of tax opinions of the State Board of Equalization’s (Board) legal counsel published in the Business Taxes Law Guide, was not quite correct. Specifically the Court of Appeal erred in suggesting that it would defer to *16the Board’s or its legal counsel’s rule unless that rule is “arbitrary and capricious.” The majority do not purport to change the well-established, if not always consistently articulated, body of law pertaining to judicial review of administrative rulings, but merely attempt to clarify that law. I write separately to further clarify the relevant legal principles and their application to the present case.
The appropriate starting point of a discussion of judicial review of administrative regulations is an analysis of quasi-legislative regulations, those regulations formally adopted by an agency pursuant to the California Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and binding on the agency. “The proper scope of a court’s review is determined by the task before it.” (Woods v. Superior Court (1981) 28 Cal.3d 668, 679 [170 Cal.Rptr. 484, 620 P.2d 1032], italics added.) In the case of quasi-legislative regulations, the court has essentially two tasks. The first duty is “to determine whether the [agency] exercised [its] quasi-legislative authority within the bounds of the statutory mandate.” (Morris v. Williams (1967) 67 Cal.2d 733, 748 [63 Cal.Rptr. 689, 433 P.2d 697] (Morris).) As the Morris court made clear, this is a matter for the independent judgment of the court. “While the construction of a statute by officials charged with its administration, including their interpretation of the authority invested in them to implement and carry out its provisions, is entitled to great weight, nevertheless ‘Whatever the force of administrative construction . . . final responsibility for the interpretation of the law rests with the courts.’ [Citation.] Administrative regulations that alter or amend the statute or enlarge or impair its scope are void and courts not only may, but it is their obligation to strike down such regulations. [Citations.]” (Ibid., italics added.) This duty derives directly from statute. “Under Government Code[1] section 11373 [now § 11342.1], ‘[e]ach regulation adopted [by a state agency], to be effective, must be within the scope of authority conferred. . . .’ Whenever a state agency is authorized by statute ‘to adopt regulations to implement, interpret, make specific or otherwise carry out the provisions of the statute, no regulation adopted is valid or effective unless consistent and not in conflict with the statute. ([§ 11342.2].)” (Morris, supra, 67 Cal.2d at p. 748, fn. omitted, italics added by Morris court.)
The court’s second task arises once it has completed the first. “If we conclude that the [agency] was empowered to adopt the regulations, we must also determine whether the regulations are ‘reasonably necessary to effectuate the purpose of the statute.’ [(§ 11342.2).] In making such a determination, the court will not ‘superimpose its own policy judgment upon the *17agency in the absence of an arbitrary and capricious decision.’ [Citations.]” (Morris, supra, 67 Cal.2d at pp. 748-749.)
In California Assn. of Psychology Providers v. Rank (1990) 51 Cal.3d 1, 11 [270 Cal.Rptr. 796, 793 P.2d 2] (Rank) we further clarified the two tasks and two distinct standards of review for courts scrutinizing agency regulations. We stated: “As we said in Pitts v. Perluss (1962) 58 Cal.2d 824[, 833] [27 Cal.Rptr. 19, 377 P.2d 83], ‘[a]s to quasi-legislative acts of administrative agencies, “judicial review is limited to an examination of the proceedings before the officer to determine whether his action has been arbitrary, capricious, or entirely lacking in evidentiary support, or whether he has failed to follow the procedure and give the notices required by law.” ’ [Citations.] When, however, a regulation is challenged as inconsistent with the terms or intent of the authorizing statute, the standard of review is different, because the courts are the ultimate arbiters of the construction of a statute. Thus, [the Morris court] in finding that the challenged regulations contravened legislative intent, rejected the agency’s claim that the only issue for review was whether the regulations were arbitrary and capricious.” (Ibid., fn. omitted.) The Rank court then proceeded to reiterate the Morris formulation that “ ‘[w]hile the construction of a statute by officials charged with its administration ... is entitled to great weight, . . . final responsibility for the interpretation of the law rests with the courts.’ ” (Ibid.)2 (We will henceforth refer to this standard as the “independent judgment/great weight standard.”)
There is an important qualification to the independent judgment/great weight standard articulated above, when a court finds that the Legislature has delegated the task of interpreting or elaborating on a statute to an administrative agency. A court may find that the Legislature has intended to delegate this interpretive or gap-filling power when it employs open-ended statutory language that an agency is authorized to apply or “when an issue of interpretation is heavily freighted with policy choices which the agency is empowered to make.” (Asimow, The Scope of Judicial Review of Decisions of *18California Administrative Agencies (1995) 42 UCLA L.Rev. 1157, 1198-1199 (Asimow).) For example, in Moore v. California State Bd. of Accountancy (1992) 2 Cal.4th 999 [9 Cal.Rptr.2d 358, 831 P.2d 798] (Moore), we reviewed a regulation by the Board of Accountancy, the agency statutorily chartered to regulate the accounting profession in this state. The regulation provided that those unlicensed by that board could not use the title “accountant,” interpreting a statute, Business and Professions Code section 5058, that forbids use of titles “likely to be confused with” the titles of “certified public accountant” and “public accountant.” (2 Cal.4th at p. 1011.) As we stated, “the Legislature delegated to the Board the authority to determine whether a title or designation not identified in the statute is likely to confuse or mislead the public.” (Id. at pp. 1013-1014.)
Thus, the agency’s interpretation of a statute may be subject to the most deferential “arbitrary and capricious” standard of review when the agency is expressly or impliedly delegated interpretive authority. Such delegation may often be implied when there are broadly worded statutes combined with an authorization of agency rulemaking power. But when the agency is called upon to enforce a detailed statutory scheme, discretion is as a rule correspondingly narrower. In other words, a court must always make an independent determination whether the agency regulation is “within the scope of the authority conferred,” and that determination includes an inquiry into the extent to which the Legislature intended to delegate discretion to the agency to construe or elaborate on the authorizing statute.
The above schema applies to so-called “interpretive” regulations as well as quasi-legislative regulations. As the majority observe, “administrative rules do not always fall neatly into one category or the other . . . .” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 6, fn. 3.) Indeed, regulations subject to the formal procedural requirements of the APA include those that “interpret” the law enforced or administered by a government agency, as well as those that “implement” or “make specific” such law. (§ 11342, subd. (b).) As we recently stated: “A written statement of policy that an agency intends to apply generally, that is unrelated to a specific case, and that predicts how the agency will decide future cases is essentially legislative in nature even if it merely interprets applicable law.” (Tidewater Marine Western, Inc. v. Bradshaw (1996) 14 Cal.4th 557, 574-575 [59 Cal.Rptr.2d 186, 927 P.2d 296], italics added.)3 Moreover, all regulations are “interpretive” to some extent, because all *19regulations implicitly or explicitly interpret “the authority invested in them to implement and carry out [statutory] provisions . . . .” (Morris, supra, 67 Cal.2d at p. 748.)
Of course, some regulations may be properly designated “interpretive” inasmuch as they have no purpose other than to interpret statutes. (See, e.g., International Business Machines v. State Bd. of Equalization (1980) 26 Cal.3d 923 [163 Cal.Rptr. 782, 609 P.2d 1].) In the case of such regulations, courts will be engaged only in the first of the two tasks discussed above, i.e., ensuring that the regulation is within the scope of the statutory authority conferred, employing the independent judgment/great weight test. (See id. at p. 931, fn. 7.)
In sum, when reviewing a quasi-legislative regulation, courts consider whether the regulation is within the scope of the authority conferred, essentially a question of the validity of an agency’s statutory interpretation, guided by the independent judgment/great weight standard. (Rank, supra, 51 Cal.3d at p. 11.) This is in contrast to the second aspect of the inquiry, whether a regulation is “reasonably necessary to effectuate the statutory purpose,” wherein courts “will not intervene in the absence of an arbitrary or capricious decision.” (Ibid., citing Morris, supra, 67 Cal.2d at p. 749.) Courts may also employ the “arbitrary and capricious” standard in reviewing whether the agency’s construction of a statute is correct if the court determines that the particular statutory scheme in question explicitly or implicitly delegates this interpretive or “gap-filling” authority to an administrative agency. (See Moore, supra, 2 Cal.4th at pp. 1013-1014; Asimow, supra, 42 UCLA L.Rev. at p. 1198.)
What standard of review should be employed for administrative rulings that were not formally adopted under the APA? Such regulations fall generally into two categories. The first is the class of regulations that should have been formally adopted under the APA, but were not. In such cases, the law is clear that in order to effectuate the policies behind the APA courts are to give no weight to these interpretive regulations. (Tidewater Marine Western, Inc. v. Bradshaw, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 576; Armistead v. State Personnel Board (1978) 22 Cal.3d 198, 204-205 [149 Cal.Rptr. 1, 583 P.2d 744].) To hold otherwise would help to perpetuate the problem of avoidance by administrative agencies of “ ‘the mandatory requirements of the [APA] of public notice, opportunity to be heard by the public, filing with the Secretary of State, and publication in the [California Code of Regulations].’ ” *20(Armistead, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 205.) For these reasons, and quite apart from any expertise the agency may possess in interpreting and administering the statute, courts in effect ignore the agency’s illegal regulation.
In the second category are those regulations that are not subject to the APA because they are expressly or implicitly exempted from or outside the scope of APA requirements. For such rulings, the standard of judicial review of agency interpretations of statutes is basically the same as for those rules adopted under the APA, i.e., the independent judgment/great weight standard. (See, e.g., Wilkinson v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1977) 19 Cal.3d 491, 501 [138 Cal.Rptr. 696, 564 P.2d 848] [applying essentially this standard to a statutory interpretation arising within the context of the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board’s decisional law]; see also Asimow, supra, 42 UCLA L.Rev. at pp. 1200-1201; Judicial Review of Agency Action (Feb. 1997) 27 Cal. Law Revision Com. Rep. (1997) pp. 81-82 (Judicial Review of Agency Action).).
The Board counsel’s legal ruling at issue in this case is an example of express exemption from the APA. Section 11342, subdivision (g), specifies that the term “regulation” for purposes of the APA does not include “legal rulings of counsel issued by the Franchise Tax Board or State Board of Equalization . . . .” It is therefore evident that our decisions pertaining to regulations that fail to be approved according to required APA procedures are inapposite. It also appears evident that these rulings, as agency interpretations of statutory law, are also to be reviewed under the independent judgment/great weight standard.
But, as the majority point out, the precise weight to be accorded an agency interpretation varies depending on a number of factors. Professor Asimow states that deference is especially appropriate not only when an administrative agency has particular expertise, but also by virtue of its specialization in administering a statute, which “gives [that agency] an intimate knowledge of the problems dealt with in the statute and the various administrative consequences arising from particular interpretations.” (Asimow, supra, 42 UCLA L.Rev. at p. 1196.) Moreover, deference is more appropriate when, as in the present case, the agency is interpreting “the statute [it] enforces” rather than “some other statute, the common law, the [Constitution, or prior judicial precedents.” (Ibid.)
Another important factor, as the majority recognize, is whether an administrative construction is consistent and of long standing. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 13.) This factor is particularly important for resolution of the present case because the tax annotation with which the case is principally concerned, *21Business Taxes Law Guide Annotation No. 280.0040, was first published in 1963, and Yamaha Corporation of America does not contest that it has represented the Board’s position on the tax question at issue at least since that time. (See now 2A State Bd. of Equalization, Bus. Taxes Law Guide, Sales & Use Tax Annots. (1998) Annot. No. 280.0040, p. 3731 (hereafter Annotation No. 280.0040).)
As the Court of Appeal has stated: “Long-standing, consistent administrative construction of a statute by those charged with its administration, particularly where interested parties have acquiesced in the interpretation, is entitled to great weight and should not be disturbed unless clearly erroneous.” (Rizzo v. Board of Trustees (1994) 27 Cal.App.4th 853, 861 [32 Cal.Rptr.2d 892], This principle has been affirmed on numerous occasions by this court and the Courts of Appeal. (See, e.g., DeYoung v. City of San Diego (1983) 147 Cal.App.3d 11, 18 [194 Cal.Rptr. 722]; Nelson v. Dean (1946) 27 Cal.2d 873, 880-881 [168 P.2d 16, 168 A.L.R. 467]; Whitcomb Hotel, Inc. v. Cal. Emp. Com. (1944) 24 Cal.2d 753, 757 [151 P.2d 233, 155 A.L.R. 405]; Thornton v. Carlson (1992) 4 Cal.App.4th 1249, 1256-1257 [6 Cal.Rptr.2d 375]; Lute v. Governing Board (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 1177, 1183 [249 Cal.Rptr. 161]; Napa Valley Educators’ Assn. v. Napa Valley Unified School Dist. (1987) 194 Cal.App.3d 243, 252 [239 Cal.Rptr. 395]; Horn v. Swoap (1974) 41 Cal.App.3d 375, 382 [116 Cal.Rptr. 113].) Moreover, this principle applies to administrative practices embodied in staff attorney opinions and other expressions short of formal, quasi-legislative regulations. (See, e.g., DeYoung, supra, 147 Cal.App.3d 11, 19-21 [longstanding interpretation of city charter provision embodied in city attorney’s opinions]; Napa Valley Educators’ Assn., supra, 194 Cal.App.3d at pp. 251-252 [evidence in the record of the case, including a declaration by official with the State Department of Education, shows long-standing practice of following a certain interpretation of an Education Code provision].)
Two reasons have been advanced for this principle. First, “When an administrative interpretation is of long standing and has remained uniform, it is likely that numerous transactions have been entered into in reliance thereon, and it could be invalidated only at the cost of major readjustments and extensive litigation.” (Whitcomb Hotel, Inc. v. Cal. Emp. Com., supra, 24 Cal.2d at p. 757; see also Nelson v. Dean, supra, 27 Cal.2d at p. 881; Rizzo v. Board of Trustees, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th at p. 862.)
Second, as we stated in Moore, supra, 2 Cal.4th at pages 1017-1018, “a presumption that the Legislature is aware of an administrative construction of a statute should be applied if the agency’s interpretation of the statutory provisions is of such longstanding duration that the Legislature may be *22presumed to know of it.” As the Court of Appeal has further articulated: “ ‘[Lawmakers are presumed to be aware of long-standing administrative practice and, thus, the reenactment of a provision, or the failure to substantially modify a provision, is a strong indication [that] the administrative practice was consistent with underlying legislative intent.’ ” (Rizzo v. Board of Trustees, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th at p. 862; see also Thornton v. Carlson, supra, 4 Cal.App.4th at p. 1257; Lute v. Governing Board, supra, 202 Cal.App.3d at p. 1183; Napa Valley Educators’ Assn. v. Napa Valley Unified School Dist., supra, 194 Cal.App.3d at 252; Horn v. Swoap, supra, 41 Cal.App.3d at p. 382.) I note that in the present case, the statute under consideration, Revenue and Taxation Code section 6009.1, has been amended twice since the issuance of Annotation No. 280.0040. (Stats. 1965, ch. 1188, § 1, p. 3004; Stats. 1980, ch. 546, § 1, p. 1503.)
To state the matter in other terms, courts often recognize the propriety of assigning great weight to administrative interpretations of law either by reference to an explicit or implicit delegation of power by the Legislature to an administrative agency (see Moore, supra, 2 Cal.4th at pp. 1013-1014; Asimow, supra, 42 UCLA L.Rev. at pp. 1198-1199), or by noting the agency’s specialization and expertise in interpreting the statutes it is charged with administering (see Physicians & Surgeons Laboratories, Inc. v. Department of Health Services (1992) 6 Cal.App.4th 968, 982 [8 Cal.Rptr.2d 565]; Asimow, supra, 42 UCLA L.Rev. at pp. 1195-1196). But there is a third reason for paying special heed to an administrative interpretation: the reality that the administrative agency—by virtue of the necessity of performing its administrative functions—creates a body of de facto law in the interstices of statutory law, which is relied on by the business community and the general public to order their affairs and, after a sufficient passage of time, is presumptively accepted by the Legislature. In the present case, this third rationale for according great weight to an administrative interpretation is particularly applicable. Thus, judicial deference in this case is owed not so much to the tax annotation per se but to a long-standing practice of enforcement and interpretation by Board staff of which the annotation is evidence.
There are also particularly sound reasons why the principle of giving especially greater weight to long-standing administrative practice should apply when, as in this case, that practice is embodied in a published ruling of the Board’s legal counsel. These rulings have a special legal status. As noted, they have been specifically exempted from the APA by section 11342, subdivision (g). The purpose of this exemption was stated by the Franchise Tax Board staff in its enrolled bill report to the Governor immediately prior the enactment of the 1983 amendment containing the exemption, and its statement could be equally well applied to the Board of *23Equalization. “Department counsel issues a large number of legal rulings in several forms which address specific problems of taxpayers. While these opinions address specific problems, they are intended to have general application to all taxpayers similarly situated. This bill provides that such rulings are not regulations, and accordingly, not subject to the [Office of Administrative Law (OAL)] review process. This statutory determination will permit the department to continue to provide a valuable service to taxpayers. If rulings were deemed to be regulations, the service would have to be discontinued because of the administrative burdens created by the OAL review process.” (Franchise Tax Bd. staff, Enrolled Bill Rep., Assem. Bill No. 227 (1983-1984 Reg. Sess.) Sept. 16, 1983, p. 3, italics added.)
Thus, the passage of the 1983 amendment to section 11342 was evidently designed for the benefit of taxpayers, so that they would continue to have information about the effective legal positions of the two tax boards. The complexity of tax law and its application to the manifold factual situations of individual taxpayers appears to far outpace an agency’s capacity to promulgate and amend formal regulations. Given the importance of certainty in tax law, the Board has long engaged in the practice of issuing legal opinions to individual taxpayers. (See 1 Cal. Taxes (Cont.Ed.Bar Supp. 1996) § 2.152, p. 347.) The Legislature recognized such practice, and recognized the propriety of taxpayer reliance on such rulings, in Revenue and Tax Code section 6596. That section provides that if a person’s failure to make a timely payment or return “is due to the person’s reasonable reliance on written advice from the [B]oard,” that person would be relieved of certain payment obligations. The authorization in section 11342 to publish such individual rulings without following APA requirements is a further legislative means of facilitating business planning and increasing taxpayer certainty about tax law. Publication of this information allows taxpayers subject to the sales and use tax to structure their affairs accordingly, and, if they perceive the need, lobby the Board or the Legislature to overturn these legal rulings. As the Attorney General states in his brief, such rulings, while not binding on the agency, “have substantial precedential effect within the agency.” There is accordingly no reason to decline to extend to such legal rulings, insofar as they embody the Board’s long-standing interpretations of the sales and use tax statutes, the especially great weight accorded to other representations of long-standing administrative practice.4
Tax annotations representing the Board’s long-standing position may usefully be contrasted to positions the Board might adopt in the context of *24litigation. In Culligan Water Conditioning v. State Bd. of Equalization (1976) 17 Cal.3d 86 [130 Cal.Rptr. 321, 550 P.2d 593], we found that such litigating positions were not entitled to as great a level of deference as administrative rulings that were “embodied in formal regulation[s] or even interpretive ruling[s] covering the . . . industry as a whole . . . (Id. at p. 92).5 The tax annotation at issue in this case, although originally addressing an individual taxpayer’s query, was published and has represented the Board’s categorical position regarding taxation of gifts originating from a California source. The annotation, therefore, being both an interpretive ruling of a general nature, and one of long standing, is deserving of significantly greater weight than if the Board had adopted its position only as part of the present litigation.6
It may be argued that regulations formally adopted in compliance with the APA should intrinsically be assigned greater weight than tax annotations, because the former are promulgated only after a notice and comment period, whereas the latter are devised by the Board’s legal staff without public input. *25In the abstract, that argument is not without merit. But even if the statutory interpretations contained in tax annotations are not, ab initio, as reliable or worthy of deference as formally adopted regulations, the well-established California case law quoted above demonstrates that such reliability may be earned subsequently. Tax annotations that represent the Board’s administrative practices may, if they withstand the test of time, merit a weight that initially may not have been intrinsically warranted. Or in other words, while formal APA adoption is one factor in favor of giving greater weight to an agency construction of a statute, the fact that a rule is longstanding and the statute it interprets has been reenacted are other such factors.
In sum, as the Attorney General correctly sets forth in his brief, the appropriate standard of review for Annotation No. 280.0040 can be stated as follows: (1) the court should exercise its independent judgment to determine whether the Board’s legal counsel correctly construed the statute; (2) the Board’s construction of the statute is nonetheless entitled to “great weight”; (3) when, as here, the Board is construing a statute it is charged with administering and that statutory interpretation is longstanding and has been acquiesced in by persons interested in the matter, and by the Legislature, it is particularly appropriate to give these interpretations great weight. (Rizzo v. Board of Trustees, supra, 27 Cal.App.4th at p. 861.)7
The Court of Appeal in this case, although it stated the standard of review nearly correctly, reflected some of the confusion found in our case law when it suggested that it would defer to the Board’s annotation unless it was “arbitrary, capricious or without rational basis.” It is therefore appropriate to remand to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration in light of the proper standard of review.
George, C. J., and Werdegar, J., concurred.

 A11 further statutory references are to the Government Code unless otherwise stated.

 Certain of our own cases have confused the standards of review in this two-pronged test. For example, in Wallace Berrie & Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization (1985) 40 Cal.3d 60, 65 [219 Cal.Rptr. 142, 707 P.2d 204], after stating the above two-pronged test, declared that neither prong “ ‘presents] a matter for the independent judgment of an appellate tribunal; rather, both come to this court freighted with [a] strong presumption of regularity . . . .’ [Citation.] Our inquiry necessarily is confined to the question whether the classification is ‘arbitrary, capricious or [without] reasonable or rational basis.’ [Citation.]” As the discussion of Rank and Morris above makes clear, the first prong of the inquiry—whether the regulation is “within the scope of the authority conferred”—is not limited to the “arbitrary and capricious” standard of review, but employs the independent judgment/great weight standard. (Rank, supra, 51 Cal.3d at p. 11; Morris, supra, 67 Cal.2d at pp. 748-749.) This confusion is in part responsible for the misstatements of the Court of Appeal in the present case.

 I note that in federal law, by contrast, the term “interpretive rule” is given a particular significance and legal status. According to statute, “substantive rules of general applicability adopted as authorized by law, and statements of general policy or interpretations of general applicability formulated and adopted by the agency” are required to be published in the Federal Register. (5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(1)(D).) But such “interpretive rules,” and “general *19statements of policy” are explicitly exempt from the notice and hearing provisions of the federal APA. (5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(3)(A).) No such distinction exists in California law.

 Yamaha and amicus curiae claim that tax annotations are frequently inconsistent, and that the Board legal staff has been lax in purging the Business Taxes Law Guide of outdated annotations. Obviously, to the extent that an old annotation does not represent the Board’s long-standing, consistent, interpretation, it does not merit the same consideration. (See Hudgins v. Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. (1995) 34 Cal.App.4th 1109, 1125 [41 Cal.Rptr.2d *2446].) In the present case, Yamaha does not contend that Annotation No. 280.0040 is inconsistent with other annotations, or with the Board’s actual practice, since it was issued.

 I note that some of the Culligan court’s language may be open to misinterpretation. The Board in that case contended that the proper standard of review was whether its position was “arbitrary, capricious or without rational basis.” (17 Cal.3d at p. 92.) The court disagreed, holding that “ ‘[t]he interpretation of a regulation, like the interpretation of the statute, is, of course, a question of law [citations], and while an administrative agency’s interpretation of its own regulation obviously deserves great weight [citations], the ultimate resolution of such legal questions rests with courts.’ ” (Id. at p. 93.) In expressing its disagreement with the proposition that the Board’s litigating position deserves the highest level of deference, the Culligan court differentiated such positions from “formal regulation” of a general nature, which, the court agreed, would be overturned only if arbitrary and capricious. (Id. at p. 92.) Perhaps because the Culligan court was focused on making a distinction between regulations of a general nature and litigating positions, it did not articulate the two-pronged judicial inquiry into the validity of quasi-legislative regulations as discussed above, nor did it specify that the arbitrary and capricious standard applied only to the second prong. Nonetheless, the Culligan court was correct in holding that statutory interpretations contained in formal regulations merit more deference, all other things being equal, than an agency’s litigating positions.

 Moreover, although the Culligan court referred to “litigating positions of the Board (announced either in tax bulletins or merely as the result of an individual audit)” (Culligan Water Conditioning v. State Bd. of Equalization, supra, 17 Cal.3d at p. 93, fn. 4), it was not implying that all material contained in tax bulletins were “litigating positions.” Indeed the Culligan court cited Henry’s Restaurants of Pomona, Inc. v. State Bd. of Equalization (1973) 30 Cal.App.3d 1009 [106 Cal.Rptr. 867] as an example of a case typifying the limited judicial review appropriate for regulations of a general nature. (Culligan, supra, at p. 92.) The court in Henry’s Restaurants considered the Board’s interpretation of a sales tax question issued in the form of a General Sales Tax Bulletin. (30 Cal.App.3d at p. 1014.) The citation to Henry’s Restaurants shows that the Culligan court’s reference to “litigating positions of the Board . . . announced . . . in tax bulletins” was not to legal rulings of a general nature that might be contained in tax bulletins.

 The majority quote at length from Skidmore v. Swift & Co. (1944) 323 U.S. 134 [65 S.Ct. 161, 89 L.Ed. 124]) to describe the proper standard of judicial review of administrative rulings. I note that the United States Supreme Court has at least partly abandoned Skidmore's open-ended formulation in favor of a more bright line one. (See Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Res. Def. Council (1984) 467 U.S. 837 [104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694].) In any case, I agree with the majority that many of the factors discussed in Justice Jackson’s opinion in Skidmore are appropriate considerations under the governing California decisions, and that the discussion in Skidmore may be a useful guide to the extent it is consistent with the independent judgment/great weight test subsequently developed under California law.