Cal. CIV § 1802.20

This is the official text of Cal. CIV § 1802.20, part of California’s Civil Code — covers contracts, property ownership, personal rights, and other general civil obligations between private parties.

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Official statutory text

“Simple-interest basis” means the determination of a finance charge, other than an administrative finance charge, by applying a constant rate to the unpaid balance as it changes from time to time, either:

(a) Calculated on the basis of a 365-day year and actual days elapsed (although the seller may, but need not, adjust its calculations to account for leap years); reference in this chapter to the “365-day basis” shall mean this method of determining the finance charge, or

(b) For contracts entered into prior to January 1, 1988, calculated on the basis of a 360-day year consisting of 12 months of 30 days each and on the assumption that all payments will be received by the seller on their respective due dates; reference in this chapter to the “360-day basis” shall mean this method of determining the finance charge.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.