Jun
03
Jun
02
Martinez: Legal fight over tax hike without voter consent continues
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) continues to fight for residents in Northern Colorado. Back in March, in a major victory for taxpayers, a unanimous panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals agreed with us that a doubling of the property taxes in a few Northern Colorado counties violated the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). But the case continues, because the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District has now sought review from the Colorado Supreme Court. We recently filed our brief in opposition.
The case, Aranci v. Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, involves residents challenging a tax increase by the water district, arguing it violates TABOR. The controversy arose when the district doubled its mill levy in 2019 without seeking voter approval. The residents filed a class action lawsuit, asserting that this increase violated the TABOR requirement that governments must ask voter consent for any tax rate increases, as well as seeking a refund for what was illegally collected.
The district court initially ruled in favor of the water district, finding no violation of TABOR under a narrow exception articulated in Huber v. Colorado Mining Association, which was about a ministerial tax adjustment based on inflation. However, the court of appeals unanimously reversed that ruling, declaring the mill levy increase was not ministerial and holding for the residents on five independent grounds. Continue reading
May
30
NTUF Defends Unanimous Win Protecting Taxpayers from Doubled Property Taxes
NTUF Defends Unanimous Win Protecting Taxpayers from Doubled Property Taxes
by Tyler Martinez May 29, 2024
Our Taxpayer Defense Center continues to fight for residents in Northern Colorado. Back in March, in a major victory for taxpayers, a unanimous panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals agreed with us that a doubling of the property taxes in a few Northern Colorado counties violated the Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). But the case continues, because the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District has now sought review from the Colorado Supreme Court. We recently filed our Brief In Opposition.
The case, Aranci v. Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, involves residents challenging a tax increase by the Water District, arguing it violates Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). The controversy arose when the Water District doubled its mill levy in 2019 without seeking voter approval. The residents filed a class action lawsuit, asserting that this increase violated TABOR, which requires prior voter approval for any tax rate increases, and seeking a refund for what was illegally collected.
The District Court initially ruled in favor of the Water District, finding no violation of TABOR under a narrow exception articulated in Huber v. Colorado Mining Association, which was about a ministerial tax adjustment based on inflation. However, upon appeal, the Court of Appeals unanimously reversed, declaring the mill levy increase was not ministerial and holding for the residents on five independent grounds. Continue reading
May
29
Americans in One State Could See Tax Refunds Significantly Drop
The Colorado Legislature is redistributing your TABOR surplus as they see fit instead of rightfully returning the surplus to you.
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes
#TABOR
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#DontBeFooled
#KillHD24-1311
#HandsOffTABOR
Americans in One State Could See Tax Refunds Significantly Drop
Colorado residents can score an extra check this year worth up to $1,600 if they qualify for the TABOR refund, but the state program could see refunds drop if a new bill goes through.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis and several lawmakers have proposed SB24-228, which would cause a temporary income tax reduction and cuts the sales tax rate. The new bill would get rid of the automatic TABOR refund and instead offer the rebate only in certain years with high surpluses.
If the bill passes, the state will lower income tax rates based on the amount of money it collects, and when the surplus reaches $1.5 billion, the income tax rate would drop by 0.15 percent. So the more money the state takes in, the lower residents’ income tax rates will be.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis speaks at the opening day of Fan Expo at the Colorado Convention Center on June 30, 2023, in Denver. Polis proposed a new law that affects residents’ TABOR amounts over the… More THOMAS COOPER/GETTY IMAGES
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) refund currently provides $800 for single filers and $1,600 for couples filing jointly.
“TABOR is the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and provides a refund when the state collects more tax revenue than allowed under the statute,” Kevin Thompson, a finance expert and the founder/CEO of 9i Capital Group, told Newsweek. “This helps residents by giving money back to them when the state collects tax revenues over the stated amount based on the statute.”
To continue reading this TABOR article, click (HERE) to go to Newsweek.
May
23
2024 Colorado Legislative Session: TABOR Takings Tracker
Author: Erik Gamm and Chris Brown
TABOR Takings Tracker
Legislators placed Coloradans’ TABOR refunds squarely in their crosshairs during the 2024 legislative session, having passed over 100 bills that would slash the TABOR refund to a quarter of its projected size if signed into law. Amid a period of state revenue growth in unprecedented excess of the Referendum C spending cap and a state budget larger than $40 billion for the first time in history, the state’s legislative majority has seen fit to circumvent the standard refund mechanisms through a long list of proposed tax rate reductions, tax credits, and redistribution efforts. Since the last issue of this report five days before the end of session, five TABOR-impacting bills were defeated, four new ones were introduced, and several others were amended heavily.
By the end of the legislative session, lawmakers passed 101 bills that will affect TABOR refunds. Most of these redirect money out of refunds towards targeted tax reductions for specific groups, mainly families and low-income Coloradans. Through such measures, the state will diminish taxpayers’ agency to decide, whether by saving, investing, or donating to charity, how best to allocate money that they would normally be owed. Voters rejected Proposition HH, which proposed to take TABOR refunds in exchange for limited property tax relief, just last November.
- 101 bills were passed during the 2024 legislative session that, if signed into law, will reduce projected TABOR refunds by a combined $2.8 billion (47%) of the $6 billion projected between FY24 and FY26.
- These bills propose to reduce the TABOR refund by a combined $523 million in FY24, $1.06 billion in FY25, and $1.25 billion in FY26. The recent announcement that an additional $67 million in TABOR refunds is owed to taxpayers due to an accounting error is not reflected in this report.
- The reduction in refunds over the next three years is similar in size to the FY23 TABOR refund. Of the $3.28 billion available, $3.1 billion was distributed as direct payments of $800 to each Colorado taxpayer. The remaining $180 million was diverted via an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit approved during the 2023 session.
- The two most impactful bills from the 2024 session (see the list below) will reduce TABOR refunds by $1.8 billion, more than 42%, between FY25 and FY26. The rest of the bills would reduce refunds by a total of $391 million (9%) over that period.
- Some major bills, like SB24-166, were lost in the final days of the session.
- SB24-228, which is expected to be signed into law shortly, proposes to change the TABOR refund mechanism by lowering the state income tax rate according to the level of excess state revenue. When it comes into effect, Coloradans’ TABOR refunds will be partially replaced by income tax reductions.
The figure below shows projected TABOR refunds in the next three fiscal years and the amounts of those refunds that each bill would remove.
2024 legislation will reduce the current fiscal year’s TABOR refund to $1.3 billion, which is 71% of the latest projection.
May
23
EDITORIAL: Faux refunds preempt Colorado’s taxpayers
May
23
Colorado taxpayers to lose $2.8 billion in TABOR refunds due to legislature, study shows
Common Sense Institute says the state reduced just less than half of expected TABOR refunds to Colorado taxpayers between 2024 and 2026
The $2.8 billion loss is just less than half of the projected $6 billion in TABOR refunds for the next three years, CSI found in its report following the 2024 Colorado legislative session.
“Legislators focused intensely on TABOR refunds this session,” CSI Mike A. Leprino Fellow Lang Sias said in a statement.
“What started a few years ago,” he said, “has snowballed into what we saw play out during the 2024 session where more than 100 bills redirected TABOR refunds.”
TABOR refunds come from excess state revenue that is sent back to Colorado taxpayers in the next fiscal year.
Over the next three years, Colorado taxpayers will lose $2.8 million in TABOR refunds mostly due to tax cuts, and due to the cost of the bills impacting TABOR, according to CSI’s TABOR refund report.
TABOR refund reductions will increase over the next three years, according to CSI’s report.
May
14
Gaines: Getting back from the state what we’re owed under TABOR
Pretend that your employer accidentally overpaid you, say $20 extra a month for a couple years. Neither of you notice until one day you get an email telling you about the mistake. The mistake has been fixed and your pay will be $20 less going forward. Also, you now owe your employer $240. Not a pleasant thing to consider.
Fresh on the heels of Governor Polis signing the state budget, we got similar bad news. Due to an accounting error there’s a $67 million “oops” in the budget.
The mistake stretches all the way back to the hurried 2020 legislative session and a bill rushed through for Polis’ signature. SB20-215 created the Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise, another of those government-run “businesses” which attaches a fee to many health insurance policies (any policy regulated by the state’s division of insurance).
These fees go to Governor Polis’ pet reinsurance programs as well as subsidies for low-income residents, including, incidentally, those here illegally. Like all enterprises, this revenue was not subject to the revenue limits the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) puts on the government.
So far a pretty standard example of how our legislature likes to meet its priorities, not by the consent of those that foot the bill, but by taking without asking first. The problem came in because someone, somewhere in the state government, screwed up. I can’t quite seem to find out the exact details, but someone goofed. Tax revenues from the state’s general fund were going to this enterprise, as they were supposed to by an earlier law and no one kept the money separate.
They should have been separate because the general fund dollars are decidedly not exempt from TABOR limits. The state was keeping money above TABOR limits pretty much since the start of this enterprise, shorting us on money we are owed. As I say above, the exact details of who knew and when are not too clear to me; I have seen different versions in different news stories. Some say that no one on the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee knew until after the budget was signed, the legislators being kept in the dark while the state controller and the attorney general were trying to see if they did indeed have to return the money.
If you have seen headlines on this problem, you may or may not have noted a discrepancy in the dollar amounts. Some articles say $67 million, some say $34. Both are right, but the semantics are important. The total owed is $67 million: $33 million for this year and $34 million for the past couple years of overpayments. If I return to my analogy from before, you could liken the $34 million to the $240 you’d owe your employer, the $33 million to the $20 loss on your current check, and the loss of that $20 per month in the future to the problem the state has in trying to figure out how to fund the enterprise fully going forward.Going forward is pretty simple. Perhaps not pleasant, but simple. A bill is already working its way through the legislature to make sure that this problem doesn’t recur. Working in descending order, the next problem is how to pay the $34 million overcharge from this year. That one will likely get paid, at least in part, by not sending general fund revenue to the enterprise this year.
Lastly, the thorniest problem, the one that I think seems to be causing the most heartburn is how to pay taxpayers back the $33 million they’re owed from the last two years. I had to laugh when I read up on this issue because some Democrats, the same ones that howled about the irresponsibility of using the state’s reserves to help temporarily drop property taxes in the last special session, are now perfectly okay with dipping into said reserves to pay taxpayers back. Funny how quickly reckless financial irresponsibility isn’t reckless anymore when the political need is big enough. Tapping reserves carries a couple problems, however. First, the legislature must enable this to happen because this size of a hit puts us below the statutory minimum, and somehow, at some point in the future, that loss would need to be made up.
Another route open to our legislature would be to reduce spending. They could simply not spend as much this session and put that money into refunds. You know, kind of like when you have to forego some spending you wanted due to unexpected bills.
I marvel at this whole story.
May
09
EDITORIAL: Rein in violations of taxpayer’s rights
EDITORIAL: Rein in violations of taxpayer’s rights
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- Updated
Apr
27
Colorado lawmakers are plotting to steal billions of your tax rebates
Coloradans are supposed to get $2 billion back in their wallets through Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) tax refunds this year, but Democrat lawmakers have other plans to spend our rebates.
Their wish list already exceeds $1.5 billion with programs that are guaranteed to grow even more expensive year after year, reports Colorado Politics.
Topping the Democrats’ list is the reincarnation of cash welfare payments that were eliminated back in the 1990s because it kept families living in poverty and dependent on taxpayer programs for every necessity.
Colorado wants to revive government-dependence and pay people for each child they have and call it a tax credit — except it goes to people who pay a pittance in taxes.
The problem with these child tax credits is that it suddenly made sense for one parent to stay home and collect government checks rather than work.
PeakNation™ will recall Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet first convinced Biden and the Democrats to bring back cash welfare payments during COVID.
Bennet tried to make those cash payments permanent when he was campaigning for reelection.
To read the rest of this TABOR article, please click (HERE) to go to Colorado Peak Politics.