Colorado Capitol Report

Proposed Initiative Reducing the State Income Tax Qualifies for 2020 General Election Ballot

Proposed Initiative Reducing the State Income Tax Qualifies for 2020 General Election Ballot

The Secretary of State (SOS) announced this week that ballot initiative #306 regarding a State Income Tax Rate Reduction has obtained a sufficient number of signatures for qualification on the 2020 General Election ballot.

Initiative 306:  Reduces the state income tax from 4.63% to 4.55% for taxable years beginning January 1, 2020. The proponents of this initiative led by the Independence Institute submitted 197,000 signatures which exceeds the 124,632 valid signatures needed in order to qualify for the 2020 ballot.

In its review, the Elections Division projected the number of valid signatures to be 140,058, which is greater than 110% of total signatures needed to be on the ballot. Below is a summary of the verification of the signatures:

Total number of signatures submitted
198,538
5% of qualified signatures submitted (random sample)
9,927
Total number of entries accepted (valid) from the random sample
7,003
Total number of entries rejected (invalid) from the random sample
2,924
Number of projected valid signatures from the random sample
140,058
Total number of signatures required for placement on the ballot
124,632
Projected percentage of required valid signatures
112.38%

 

Reminder:  Initiative 271 will not be on the 2020 ballot….

Proponents of ballot initiative #271 did not secure enough signatures from voters, therefore this initiative will NOT appear on the 2020 ballot. The measure would have dramatically changed the current state income tax system by reverting the rate to the following:

  • reduce current income tax rate from 4.63% to 4.58% for taxpayers earning $250,000 or less annually;
  • raise the tax rate to 7.00% for taxpayers earning $250,000 to $500,000;
  • raise the rate to 7.75% for those earning $500,000 to $1 million; and
  • raise the rate to 8.9% for taxpayers earning above $1 million.

Please contact Loren Furman at [email protected] with any questions regarding this matter.