Esther Turcios on Confronting the Racist Roots of Tax Policy
From a Means of Oppression to a Tool for Progression
I learned three lessons about taxes while growing up: 1) They take a chunk out of your paycheck, even when it’s your first one 2) The number on the price tag is less than what you’ll actually pay and 3) Tax time in the Turcios house always meant my parents got a refund — which also meant my brothers and I would get a gift!
As I got older and started working my first real job (shout out to Macy’s) I came to dislike taxes. I didn’t understand what FICA was or how exactly Social Security worked. All I knew was that my feet hurt from standing all day ringing up purchases, only to have my paycheck reflect less than what I thought it should be.
Not only was I experiencing the same despair that I saw my parents struggle with, I was also experiencing the same frustration I saw reflected in my community since I was a young girl. Hundreds of immigrant families like mine were working one, two, even three jobs to make ends meet and taxes seemed to be making it harder. But it always felt like there was nothing we could do about it, taxes sucked and it was just a part of life — or so I thought.
In 2017, I joined the CFI team as a State Policy Fellow. To be honest, I had no idea what tax policy was at the time. All I knew was that I was a recent (broke) social work graduate who wanted to be part of systems change work and who needed a job. But then I started learning ALL about taxes — their history, how they’re collected, who they’re collected from, and how they’re used to fund public investments. And I learned that taxes themselves aren’t bad, they’re just a tool. And like any tool, they can be used properly or improperly.
What I Learned about Colorado’s Regressive Tax Code
- Coloradans who earn the lowest incomes pay the highest percentages of their income in state and local taxes.
- Coloradans who make the lowest incomes pay the exact same income tax rate (4.4%) as the richest Coloradans like Denver Nuggets basketball player Nikola Jokic and Colorado billionaires like Philip Anschutz.
Why does Colorado have such an upside down tax code? Because of misguided tax policy decisions made through the ballot and the legislature. In 1992, Colorado voters chose to support the passage of Initiative 1, which added the infamous Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) to our state’s constitution. TABOR is the most restrictive tax policy in the nation and has given birth to some of the worst outcomes for Coloradans across the state, especially for BIPOC Coloradans. If you are a Black or Latinx Colorado taxpayer, you are both more likely to earn a lower income and are more likely to pay a higher share of that income in taxes than are white Coloradans.
The Racist Roots of American Tax Policies
You can imagine how furious I was learning about tax policy in our state, and even more so learning about the racist history of tax policy in this country. Take Mississippi for instance. In 1935, Mississippi adopted the nation’s first modern sales tax, a tax that generally falls hardest on people with the lowest incomes. Then Governor Mike Connor successfully pushed the all-white male legislature to adopt it by arguing, in part, that doing so would keep property tax rates down for white property owners, and make Black Mississippians pay more taxes overall.
Or California. During the gold rush years of the 1850s, California imposed a special tax on immigrant miners; U.S.-born whites were not subject to the tax. The tax fell on immigrant miners of European descent as well as those from China and Latin America, but for a period in 1855 and 1856, the state imposed an additional tax solely on immigrant miners ineligible for citizenship, mainly Chinese and Latinx miners who were legally barred from becoming U.S. citizens because they were not “free white persons.”
So what was a woman to do with all this knowledge about tax policy? Become a tax ambassador of course! A tax ambassador is a knowledgeable advocate prepared to talk to our fellow Coloradans about crafting more equitable fiscal policies.
Yes, it was hard to learn the racist history of tax policy, especially as a Latina. But I also found it oddly empowering. It finally put into perspective how my parents, community and I felt. Taxes have indeed been used as a tool of oppression against poor and working class people, especially people of color, so our feelings were not out of line. We were right to feel burdened by taxes, because those making policy decisions chose to use them in a way that is burdensome to us.
But it does not have to continue being this way. Taxes are clearly a powerful tool, and just like they’ve been used as tools of oppression, they can be used as tools to create resilient and thriving communities. When we stop thinking about taxes as money the government takes from us and start thinking about them as a collective pot of funds that help pay our teachers, pay for paved roads, and pay for our beautiful parks and open spaces, we can see the ways in which we can all benefit from them.
You can’t change what you don’t understand. I didn’t understand that I could help influence tax policy, let alone make a career out of it! But once we join the conversation, we may change our perspective about taxes. Then we can advocate for tax policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit – two of the nation’s strongest tax policies to pull children and families out of poverty. Or we can vote for policies like Proposition FF on our ballot, which ensures wealthy Coloradans pay their fair share in taxes so we can fund healthy breakfast and lunch meals for all Colorado kids in public schools.
So what are three lessons I carry about taxes today? 1) They are a neutral tool — it’s the policies that govern them that can either be used to create healthy and thriving communities or to oppress, 2) they are not race neutral and we must understand their history in order to rectify the impact of racist policies, and 3) we all have the power and responsibility to advocate for people-centered tax policies.
Esther Turcios is the Deputy Director of the Colorado Fiscal Institute.
