TABOR Reform Resources

TABOR was sold to Coloradans as a simple promise: keep government on a diet and send taxpayers refund checks when times are good. But three decades later, Colorado’s wallet feels the pinch.

Since 1992, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights has quietly become one of the tightest tax constraints in the country, deciding what our state can and cannot afford. It does not just cap spending. It locks lawmakers into rigid revenue limits, even as our population grows, costs rise, and new challenges emerge. What was framed as taxpayer control often functions more like a set of handcuffs on our state.

If you have ever looked at a crowded classroom, rising child care costs, strained public services, or a recurring budget shortfall and thought, “Wait, something does not add up,” you are not wrong. TABOR shapes those outcomes in ways that are easy to overlook but impossible to ignore once you see the full picture.

And the stakes are even higher now. As federal programs are slashed or scaled back, most states can step in to stabilize funding and protect families. Colorado cannot. TABOR’s constraints make it uniquely difficult to respond when Washington pulls back, leaving deeper shortfalls and fewer tools to meet real-world needs.

Subscribe to CFI’s “TABOR: The Colorado Con”—short emails, sent when it matters, unpacking TABOR’s real-world consequences so you’ve got the receipts to argue why tax reform is urgently needed in Colorado.