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Newsletter — Issue 51 — Tuesday, October 6, 2026
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This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.
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Pay Attention to the Fine Print
Nearly Every Coloradan Will Pay Higher Taxes If Amendment 87 Passes
This Engage Colorado Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team. The Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future Coalition did not review and has not endorsed this Engage Colorado Newsletter.
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I oppose Amendment 87 because it will drive technology and innovation out of Colorado: the founders, the companies they build, and the capital that follows them. That loss would harm every Coloradan.
But as I studied Amendment 87 further, I reached a second conclusion. Amendment 87 is highly likely to result in nearly every income-earning Coloradan paying more in taxes over time.
The wording of Amendment 87 is misleading. The table printed on your ballot shows a tax cut for every income group under $1 million. The table does not tell you that the best case scenario is a tiny amount of saving. Taxpayers earning under $15,000 save an average of $1 a year. Those earning $15,000 to $30,000 save $39. The most anyone will save is $325, and that is the same $325 whether you earn $150,000 or $499,999.
In reality though, Amendment 87 will open the door for Colorado's legislature to increase taxes for nearly every Colorado wage earner.
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Start With Intent
The intent of the political leaders and advocates behind Amendment 87 is more tax revenue, to fund ever-increasing government spending. They say so in their own text.
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The ballot title: “Shall state taxes be increased $2.7 billion annually, in order to increase or improve levels of public services...?”
The measure's own declaration names the obstacle: TABOR “has significantly limited the ability of state and local governments to invest.”
And the measure requires every new dollar to “supplement and not supplant current levels of appropriations” — it must be spent on top of what the state already spends.
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TABOR is the set of protections that make it difficult for political leaders to raise taxes without the permission of the voters. Each step that waters down those protections opens another path, often a politically clever one, to raise more taxes from each and every Coloradan.
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Pay Attention to the Fine Print
Amendment 87 changes one sentence of the Colorado Constitution. Here it is as printed in the official ballot information booklet, with the deleted words struck through:
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“Any income tax law change after July 1, 1992 shall also require all taxable net income to be taxed at one rate, excluding refund tax credits or voter-approved tax credits, with no added tax or surcharge.”
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Why is “tax or” being crossed out? Why is the constitutional ban on an added tax on income being eliminated? What added taxes will follow from this new flexibility for lawmakers? If Amendment 87 passes, you will learn the answer as your tax bill rises.
Why strike the words limiting tax credits to refunds and credits the voters approved? Who will decide which credits shrink as your income grows — and how much revenue that will raise?
How will the elimination of the “at one rate” protection be used to generate more taxes in the future?
Each struck phrase removes a barrier to finding new ways to increase your taxes.
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Proposition NN Means You Would Pay More Taxes
Proposition NN is on the same ballot. Paired with Amendment 87, it removes the safety valve that protects Colorado taxpayers.
Today, TABOR caps how much revenue the state can keep each year. When the state collects more than the cap, the excess goes back to taxpayers as refunds, unless voters approve keeping it. That cap is the safety valve: whatever new ways lawmakers find to raise revenue, the money above the cap comes back to you.
Proposition NN raises that cap by $4.6 billion in its first year, and is expected to eliminate TABOR refunds for at least five to ten years. After ten years, the money retained beyond a fixed amount for K-12 can be spent on any purpose the legislature chooses.
Amendment 87 opens the door. Proposition NN means the state will keep more of the taxes you pay every year.
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Do You Want to Pay More Taxes?
If Amendment 87 passes, nearly every Coloradan who earns an income will pay more in taxes over time.
Amendment 87, especially combined with Proposition NN, is a clever way to give our political leaders more tax revenue to fund an ever-increasing level of spending. TABOR's protections exist so that voters decide when taxes go up. Amendment 87 strikes words that have protected every Colorado taxpayer since 1992, and Proposition NN removes the refund that hands back what the state over-collects. Together, they open new ways around asking voters to approve tax increases.
Our political leaders will find those ways. They will discover new ways to raise tax revenue — and you will pay for them.
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Your Vote and Your Signature
Please protect Colorado's future by voting no on Amendment 87 and Proposition NN.
Please also sign the Open Letter — addressed to Attorney General Weiser, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, and Mayor Johnston — asking that they support Proposition 136 and oppose Amendment 87. Governor Polis has already signed it. More than 370 Colorado technology, business, and civic leaders have added their names.
Read it. Sign it. Then send it to three people who should sign it too.
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Ballots are in the mail. Election Day is November 3.
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If We Work Together, the Sky's the Limit
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Colorado can be the most attractive innovation ecosystem in the world, and every Coloradan will share in the economic and cultural prosperity that results from being the world's leading geography for innovation.
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This is the Innovation Vision for Colorado.
But to have a realistic chance of achieving this vision, we must defeat Amendment 87.
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