Colorado · November 2026 ballot
Amendment 87 is the progressive income tax measure, which would be the largest tax hike in Colorado history — $2.7 billion every year — handed to the legislature with almost no strings attached. Brighter Colorado is running the campaign to stop it. We need your help to win.
Colorado already ranks as the third-most-expensive state in the country.
What Amendment 87 actually does
Amendment 87 raises $2.7 billion a year and writes the spending plan into statute — not the constitution. The legislature can redirect that money whenever it wants, without ever coming back to voters.
Colorado's flat 4.4% rate would climb to 7.4% on income above $500,000 and 8.4% above $1 million — for individuals and businesses alike. No tax increase this large has ever been put to Colorado voters.
Because of how Amendment 87 rewrites the constitution, it could force the state to tax all net income — putting Colorado's tax breaks on Social Security, pensions, and military retirement pay at risk.
Colorado is already the third-most-expensive state, and lost roughly 12,000 residents to other states in a single year. Nearly doubling the rate on employers gives them one more reason to leave — and leaves the bill with everyone who stays.
The fine print
A constitutional amendment that adds words needs 55% of the vote to pass. One that only cuts words needs just over 50%. So rather than write a clean tax increase, the drafters went into the constitution and started deleting. Here's what they cut:
"Any income tax law change after July 1, 1992 shall also require all taxable net income to be taxedat one ratewith no added surcharge."
A limit on government: if the state taxes income, it has to tax it at a single, flat rate. That's the protection Colorado voters have kept for more than three decades.
Strike "at one rate" and the sentence stops limiting how the state taxes and starts requiring that it tax — all taxable net income. Subtractions for Social Security, pensions, and military retirement sit squarely in the way.
The second deletion
Amendment 87 strikes two separate phrases out of a single sentence in the constitution, and the second one is easy to miss. Today that sentence requires income to be taxed “with no added tax or surcharge.” Amendment 87 deletes the word tax and leaves only the surcharge ban standing — and nothing in what survives limits who an added tax could reach.
“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.”
Two protections in a single sentence: income is taxed at one flat rate, and nothing extra — no added tax, no added surcharge — can be stacked on top of it.
“Any income tax law change after July 1, 1992 shall also require all taxable net income to be taxed with no added surcharge.”
The flat rate is gone, and so is the ban on an added tax. A surcharge is still blocked. An added tax is not — and the clause says nothing about income level, so it reaches everyone’s income, not just the top.
Who really pays
Colorado's tax base is already concentrated at the top: roughly 27,685 households pay more than a third of all individual income taxes, and individual income taxes fund 59% of the state's General Fund.
When the most mobile taxpayers leave, the shortfall doesn't vanish with them. It gets handed to the families who stay — through higher rates, new fees, or cuts to the services they count on.
Our plan to win
We're not just playing defense. Alongside the campaign against Amendment 87, we're sponsoring Proposition 136 to cap Colorado's income tax rate at 4.4% for individuals and businesses — permanently.
Why the margin matters: if both measures pass, the one with more votes controls. Winning by a wide margin doesn't just stop the tax hike — it cancels it out and locks the 4.4% cap in place.
Chip in today
A coalition of 35 organizations on the left is behind Amendment 87, and they are spending to win. Between now and November, this gets decided on television, in mailboxes, and on every screen in Colorado.
Your contribution funds the campaign to defeat the tax increase and pass the 4.4% cap. Colorado voters rejected the last attempt to raid TABOR by 19 points. With the resources to make the case, they'll do it again.
