Advance Colorado Executive Vice President Kristi Burton Brown gives a brief history and explanation of Colorado’s unique taxpayer protection: the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. This revenue cap limits the state government’s ability to spend taxpayer dollars and requires refunds to be sent to Coloradans when the government collects beyond the limit.
March 1, 2025
The Department of Government efficiency (DOGE) faces many challenges in downsizing the federal government. The cuts in federal government programs proposed by DOGE have made headlines, but this approach to fiscal responsibility suffers from some blind spots. The federal government could learn much from the states in restoring sustainable fiscal policies.
One flaw is that DOGE will not address reforms in Social Security, Medicare, and other health care programs. These entitlement programs account for almost half of the federal budget and are growing at an unsustainable rate. Over the next decade, the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will be exhausted. The most important lesson from the states is that budget constraints must apply to all programs, including entitlements. In recent decades, state expenditures for public employee pensions and health care programs were growing at an unsustainable rate. Most states responded to this challenge by reforming these programs to ensure their sustainability in the long term.
There is some ambiguity regarding the savings generated from DOGE reforms. Perhaps the worst idea is to simply return these savings to the budget in the following year; the states that have done this have had little success in constraining spending. Some have suggested that the savings generated by DOGE be offset by tax rebates, and some states have done this. However, the federal government now faces a debt crisis. The federal debt is now at $36 trillion and is projected to grow to more than double our national income by mid-century. There is almost universal agreement among economists that this growth in federal debt is not sustainable. The highest priority should be in stabilizing and reducing federal debt in coming decades, which means that any savings generated by DOGE, or from other reforms, should be earmarked for debt reduction.
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DENVER (KDVR) — Monday marked the first day the IRS could start accepting and processing your tax return.
Colorado filers need to keep an eye out for one key step to make sure they get all the money they are eligible for back in their wallets.
Coloradans are set to get TABOR refunds after they file their taxes this year, but the state is reminding residents that they have to opt in.
“Unfortunately, if you didn’t check that box for your taxes you filed in 2024 for tax year 2023, you did miss out on your tabor refund,” said Elisabeth Kosar, communications director for the Colorado Department of Revenue. “TABOR is something you need to opt into so please, please check that box or again have whoever is preparing your taxes check that box.” Continue reading
January 19, 2025 By Nash Herman
Colorado legislators are discovering first-hand the impossibility of having their cake and eating it too.
The Joint Budget Committee continues to meet with dozens of departments to reconcile an approximately $750 million budget shortfall in 2025, with some absurdly claiming that deficit is purely a result of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) at work.
Granted, it does sounds bizarre that the state must make budget cuts in a year that it is still expected to collect a surplus of revenue beyond what is allowed by TABOR. But by looking at the facts, anyone can come to see how the so-called budget “crisis” is actually a self-inflicted wound from the legislature’s relentless over-spending.
Having their cake
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Colorado received a windfall of federal funds to prop up the state economy and boost recovery. To fund that massive stimulus, the federal government printed money, causing an increased supply of dollars chasing the same number of goods. This in turn lead to the dollar being worth less, also known as inflation. Continue reading
January 7, 2025 By Rep. Ryan Gonzalez
In 1992, Colorado voters passed the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, the nation’s strongest tax limitation law to this day. For those who are unfamiliar what TABOR really does, this amendment to the Colorado Constitution allows government spending to reasonably increase using a formula of population growth plus inflation. Excess revenue, known as the “TABOR surplus,” must be refunded to taxpayers. If state government wants to keep the surplus, or raise taxes, voters must approve. That is exactly why progressives abhor TABOR. But the truth is, a little north of 60% of Colorado voters approve of TABOR.
Many progressives have made their disdain for TABOR be known, having tried time and time again to chip away at TABOR’s taxpayer protections. And in many ways, they’ve done so; mostly by adding tax credits which pull from the TABOR surplus. They’ve done so by giving everyone equal tax refunds and redistributing wealth; taking from those who paid the most in state taxes and giving more to those who paid little.
In 2022, the Democrat majority, just before a critical midterm election, gave taxpayers what they called the “Colorado cash back” in disguise as a “stimulus” check. What they didn’t tell you is that it was actually your TABOR refund, just early and proportioned against historical distribution. Continue reading
December 20, 2024 By Nash Herman
The University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business recently released their 60th annual Business Outlook for 2025, and, despite a moderate outlook in 2025, the report includes some disturbing trends in the Colorado economy. Let’s take a look at some of what’s going wrong.
Troubling trends
As pointed out by Denver Post business writer Aldo Svaldi, Colorado was the fifth fastest growing economy in the country in the last 15 years, but was 41st this year.
In terms of personal income growth, Colorado moved from third to 39th.
Although Colorado only moved down from sixth to 15th for employment growth, it comes with the caveat that the job gains this year were skewed toward government, education and healthcare, and leisure and hospitality.
Conversely, the growth of the high-paying professional and business services industry has continued a downward trend since 2022.
Fueled by slowing migration to Colorado and an aging population, Colorado’s labor force growth ranking also moved from sixth to 29th.
Taxes, spending and regulation
Obviously, some of the problems with Colorado’s economy are externally caused, like the lingering effects of the pandemic and subsequent inflation from federal spending.
However, I think there is still more to be said as to why Colorado’s economy seems to be stuttering now.
Colorado’s shift toward bigger government and away from the free market is why these problems are beginning to manifest. Over-regulation, over-spending, and over-taxation are the key culprits. To Coloradans who have witnessed the economy’s decline, the most noticeable difference between today and twenty years ago is that the state now more closely resembles California more than the entrepreneurial Colorado of old. Continue reading
List of Real Pro-Liberty Colorado organizations: https://freestatecolorado.com/jeffco-… It’s the time of the year when Coloradans generously open their wallets to support charities across the State. However, one of Colorado’s largest charitable organizations gave $20,000 to a political committee that helped raise taxes in Jefferson County by $66 million this year! The Colorado Gives Foundation, which runs Colorado Gives Day, brings in around $500,000,000 yearly, and 3,7000 charitable organizations rely on them to help raise money! However, Liberty-minded Coloradans need to know that this organization is responsible for one of the worst assaults on the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) that we saw this year. In this video, Natalie Menten provides the details with tax documents, Secretary of State reports and more!
Since 2018, Colorado taxpayers have benefited from two reductions to the state income tax that together have brought the rate from 4.63% to 4.4%, for an aggregate reduction of 0.23%. These reductions have been much heralded by state government leaders and have elicited approving comments from a wide range of observers.
The applause for these tax cuts, however, has obscured a separate tactic that state leaders increasingly have used to extract revenue from Coloradans in amounts that dwarf the income tax reductions. During the last two decades, Coloradans have seen a steady increase in the fees paid to a wide range of state enterprises. The pattern has accelerated dramatically since 2018.
According to a recent Common Sense Institute study, fee-based revenue to enterprises has increased since 2018 by an amount equivalent to a 0.51% increase in the state income tax — so, more than double the recent tax cuts. If Colorado’s fee enterprises, minus higher education, were instead funded by the state income tax, the state income tax would increase to 7.68%, a 75% increase over the current rate of 4.4%.
