Colorado voters split over Amendment 87 tax hikes on rich, with race still too close to call

Amendment 87, a proposed $2 billion tax hike on Colorado’s highest earners, remained too close to call Tuesday night.

If approved, the measure would replace the state’s 4.4% flat income tax with a graduated income tax that would charge households and businesses higher rates the more money they earn.

Amendment 87 was leading with 50.6% in favor and 49.4% opposed as of 11:36 p.m. Tuesday, with 73% of votes counted.

The measure, backed by a coalition of progressive advocacy groups, would install six new tax brackets if it passes, raising taxes on households and businesses making more than about $500,000, while cutting them on the first $100,000 people earn a year.

It would generate an estimated $2 billion annually for healthcare, public schools and childcare.

The progressive groups behind the measure sought to tap into simmering anger at the rich at a time when billionaires are accumulating wealth faster than ever and the middle class is struggling to afford the essentials.

For a household with $75,000 in taxable income, taxes would go down by $275 a year. For a family making $550,000, taxes would go up $1,175 a year, while someone making $10 million annually would owe an additional $376,000 in taxes. The same changes would also apply to business profits.

Conservatives and business groups opposed the measure, saying it would drive up consumer prices and increase financial pressure on businesses at an already difficult economic time.

For Karen Vidana, a 22-year-old who works in retail, Amendment 87 was an easy sell.

“I just heard something about taxes helping people and I’m like, yes, yes, yes,” Vidana said after casting her ballot in the Denver suburbs.

Jeff Wallace, a 67-year-old physician, said his “only reservation” in voting for it was whether state officials would spend the money where they promised.

“But I still (think) that a progressive income tax is fair for the average person,” he said after voting in Pagosa Springs. “The very wealthy can afford more.”

Others said they were deterred by the higher taxes.

Mackinzie Washington, a 32-year old landscape construction foreman, was on the fence, but ultimately voted no. “I’m for more taxes on corporations, but not the people, and they kind of bundled it together,” Washington, who is politically unaffiliated, said after casting his ballot in Westminster. “So you’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place there.”

Don Vigil, 49, opposed it for the opposite reason — he was worried the higher business taxes would harm his friends who own businesses.

“I have friends that own a small martial arts school, gun shops, paleterias — Mexican ice cream shops — and they were all against it,” said Vigil, a registered Republican.

The state Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, also known as TABOR, explicitly prohibits Colorado from enacting a graduated income tax system. Amendment 87 would delete that provision from the constitution, while also enacting a law establishing the new tax brackets.

In a separate vote, Coloradans appeared poised to defeat Proposition 136, a conservative ballot measure that sought to thwart Amendment 87’s higher tax brackets by setting a maximum state income tax rate of 4.4%. The measure was trailing with 52.9% opposed as of 11:40 p.m., but the race had not yet been called.

Colorado Sun staff writers Shannon Mullane, Parker Yamasaki and Jesse Paul contributed to this report.

☀️ READ MORE