MEDIA RELEASE
Contact:
Penn Pfiffner
TABOR Committee Chairman
303-233-7731 or 303-747-7460
August 8, 2024
Today the TABOR Committee relinquished hope that people would be able to vote on saving their TABOR refunds. “There were simply not enough time and resources to collect the signatures in time for a citizen’s veto,” said Committee Director Rebecca Sopkin, who filed the ballot measure to repeal the 2024 law.
A new law establishes a new income redistribution program using about half of everyone’s TABOR refund.
TABOR was never meant to be an instrument to redistribute income. Tax rates were to be adjusted downward to eliminate any permanent over-collections. Refunds are legally a return of state sales taxes. “The constitution specifically calls for returning over-collected taxes to those who pay the taxes. You can’t tell me that someone making $15,000 a year bought $110,000 of taxable goods,” observed Committee chairman Penn Pfiffner. The State does not impose sales taxes on purchase of housing, food or medicine.
The Committee explained that the income redistribution only happens if there is a TABOR refund and so why, if this program is so important to proponents, did legislators fail to place it under the general fund budget?
The measure, HD24-1311, diverts $684 million in the first year, using planned TABOR refunds to impose again the federal COVID program of subsidies to low-income families with children, but using new taxpayer funds at the state level.
The program will send money to recipients even beyond the taxes that the person pays. Eligible people do not have to be taxpayers. They do not have to be citizens! They do not even have to reside in the state all year!
Legislators are ignoring a very important message by citizens in the landslide vote last fall against Proposition HH. With a roar, they told the government to leave the TABOR rebates alone so that taxes over-collected by the state would be returned to the taxpayers.
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