A coalition of business groups pleaded with Colorado lawmakers Tuesday to avoid passing any legislation, however well-intentioned, that would make it more complicated or costly to do business in the state.

“We need our state leaders to simply allow businesses to get back on their feet at this time. That is the only path back to economic recovery,” said Loren Furman, chief lobbyist with the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the news conference on Zoom.

The Common Sense Institute, a group formed by the business community in the wake of the Great Recession, released a study that estimates Colorado businesses face $1.8 billion in additional costs in the next three to five years because of earlier laws passed, as well as the fallout from the pandemic, primarily a depleted state unemployment insurance trust fund.

Additional costs, not included in the study, will come with mandatory sick leave coverage, improved health insurance benefits, tighter oil and gas regulations and emissions reductions, among other things.

Employers in the state face a $500 million increase in unemployment insurance premiums next fiscal year, not counting the interest on federal loans and other surcharges. Colorado is among 19 states with a depleted unemployment insurance trust fund that depends on federal loans to cover benefits.

Replenishing that fund is mandatory, and not a policy matter. But rather than helping backfill the shortfall, lawmakers last year increased the share of wages an unemployed worker can claim, boosting the payout to recipients at a cost of $18 million a year to employers.

The state’s new paid family and medical leave is forecast to collect nearly $725 million in business premiums in the next fiscal year. The legislature also rolled back $32 million in tax breaks provided under the Cares Act to help fund education.

On the plus side for business, voters approved a reduction in the state income tax rate, which will reduce taxes there by $156 million. But the legislature is expected to take up a tax reform package that could eliminate some of the tax breaks businesses had relied on.

“We are very concerned about a package of bills that could eliminate tax credit and exemptions,” Furman said.

House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, said the legislature often works collaboratively with the business community. Recent examples reducing the Business Personal Property Tax burden and working to repeal the Gallagher amendment, which has over time concentrated a larger share of property taxes on owners of commercial buildings.

Lawmakers also passed a sales tax reduction for restaurants and set aside tens of millions of dollars in small-business assistance during the special session last year. But she added lawmakers have also fought for “common sense protections for workers.”

“Despite the incredible growth Colorado has seen, state government, and thus Colorado taxpayers, have had to do more every year to protect workers who are falling through the cracks because some businesses refuse to pay a livable wage or offer meaningful benefits even when profits are high,” she said in an email. “Particularly in the midst of a pandemic, it’s important to build back stronger by both working to support our economy and small businesses, and ensuring workers have the protections and support they need.”

Colorado had 150,000 fewer jobs in December than it did before the pandemic’s start, and has gone from having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation to one of the highest. Business leaders said the pace of any recovery will depend on the state’s business climate, which is looking less favorable than it did coming out of the Great Recession.

Small businesses have been especially hard hit in this downturn, and they are not as equipped to deal with the new programs Colorado is implementing, said Tony Gagliardi, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Small businesses suffered a nearly 30% drop in annual revenue as of early February, due in part to mandatory closures that allowed better-financed national chains to remain open. One out of four small businesses has failed or is on the verge of doing so, he said.

“We implore the legislature to realize what you are doing before you do it. Have some forethought on impacts,” he said.

Regulatory and tax policies do matter in how the state’s business climate is perceived, said Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, adding that the strength of Colorado’s economy shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Anyone who cares about Colorado workers should create an environment that fosters job creation, not dampens it, she said.

LONDON — The Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed Saturday to support a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15% in order to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries.

G-7 finance ministers meeting in London also endorsed proposals to make the world’s biggest companies – including U.S.-based tech giants – pay taxes in countries where they have lots of sales but no physical headquarters.

The agreement followed the outlines of proposals by U.S. President Joe Biden, who has pushed for a global deal on corporate taxation in return for countries such as France withdrawing local taxes that the U.S. argues unfairly target American tech companies.

British Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, the meeting’s host, said the deal would “reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age and crucially to make sure that it’s fair, so that the right companies pay the right tax in the right places.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who attended the London meeting, said the agreement “provides tremendous momentum” for reaching a global deal that “would end the race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the U.S. and around the world.”

The meeting “emphasized the power of global cooperation in addressing the most critical issues we face,” Yellen said.

The meeting of finance ministers came ahead of an annual summit of G-7 leaders scheduled for June 11-13 in Cornwall, England. The endorsement from the G-7 could help build momentum for a deal in wider talks among more than 140 countries being held in Paris as well as a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Venice in July.

International discussions on the tax issue gained momentum after Biden backed the idea of a global minimum of at least 15% — and possibly higher — on corporate profits.

The tax proposals endorsed Saturday have two main parts. The first part lets countries tax a share of the profits earned by companies that have no physical presence but have substantial sales, for instance through selling digital advertising.

France had launched debate over the issue by imposing its own digital services tax on revenues it deemed to have been earned in France by companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. Other countries have followed suit. The U.S. considers those national taxes to be unfair trade measures that improperly single out American firms.

Part of the agreement Saturday is that other countries would repeal their unilateral digital taxes in favor of a global agreement.

Facebook’s vice-president for global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the deal is a big step toward increasing business certainty and raising public confidence in the global tax system but acknowledged it could cost the company.

“We want the international tax reform process to succeed and recognize this could mean Facebook paying more tax, and in different places,” Clegg said on Twitter.

The G-7 statement echoes a U.S. alternative to let countries tax part of the earnings of the largest and most profitable global companies — digital or not — if they are doing business within their borders. It supported awarding countries the right to tax 20% or more of local profits exceeding a 10% profit margin.

Yellen, asked if she had given her European counterparts assurances that large U.S. tech firms would be included, said the agreement “will include large profitable firms, and I believe those firms will qualify by almost any definition.”

The other main part of the proposal is for countries to tax their home companies’ overseas profits at a rate of at least 15%. That would deter the practice of using accounting schemes to shift profits to a few very low-tax countries because earnings untaxed overseas would face a top-up tax in the headquarters country.

Nations have been grappling for years with the question of how to deter companies from legally avoiding paying taxes by using accounting and legal schemes to assign their profits to subsidiaries in tax havens – typically small countries that entice companies with low or zero taxes, even though the firms do little actual business there.

I find this all quite taxing.

Infrastructure talks just collapsed, with Republicans scratching their heads, wondering where on earth we could find the money to save our cratering bridges and highways, among other things. This was the same crowd who happily helped President Donald Trump slash tax rates for corporations and the ultrawealthy in 2017.

Meanwhile, ProPublica cracked open the vault on America’s biggest tax grifters, revealing how the Midas men dip, dodge and duck, paying pennies on the dollar, if that, while we suckers have to pony up.

How rich.

“In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes,” ProPublica reported. “He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

“Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.”

Grandfatherly shark Warren Buffett — who famously tut-tutted that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did — topped the list, among the 25 richest Americans, for avoiding the most taxes.

“Taken together,” ProPublica concluded, “it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.”

It turns out Donald Trump was the canary in the gold mine. While everyone was outraged about the first modern president who refused to show his tax returns, real billionaires were skating.

Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who was one of the architects of the law that cut taxes by more than $1 trillion, defended tax rates for “high-income people” at a town hall but in an interview with The New York Times sounded a more critical note.

“My intention as the author of the 2017 tax reform was not that multibillionaires ought to pay no taxes,” he said. “I believe dividends and capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate, but certainly not zero.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and the chair of the Finance Committee, said he was working on a bunch of proposals to force billionaires to pay their fair share, including some sort of minimum tax.

The Times story noted that ProPublica shed light on the fact that “the superrich earn virtually all their wealth from the constantly rising value of their assets, particularly in the stock market, and that the sales of those assets are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income from a paycheck.” And while the value of those assets grows by the billion, untaxed, these rich folks can borrow against them, deducting the interest.

The revelations may renew calls for the wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have long pushed. In 2019, during a campaign debate, Sanders lamented the outrageous fact that three people own more wealth in America than the bottom half of society, and he railed against the “billionaire class whose greed and corruption has been at war with the working families in this country for 45 years.”

So the secret IRS cache did not surprise him. “The rich have money, the rich have power, the rich have lobbyists, and the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes,” he said in a peak-Bernie moment.

Republicans talk a good game about adopting the winning parts of Trumpism, but you can’t be populists if you shield the rich and stick it to everybody else.

Even if they make the rich pay their fair share, it likely won’t be enough to fund most of what President Joe Biden needs to do. They’ll have to raise the corporate tax rate, which began to plunge during the Reagan years, to an equitable level and stop corporations from tax-shopping to find countries with the lowest rates.

Look, rolling around in gobs of dough and displays of obscene consumption is a tradition as American as apple pie. But up to a point, Lord Copper. Forgive me if I don’t want to celebrate Jeff Bezos’ midlife-crisis rocket ride.

Given what this country has been through with COVID, given all the corrupt bankers who got off scot-free after the economic collapse and given how hard it is to earn a buck, this new glimpse into inequities is genuinely disgusting. Paging Madame Defarge: Where do you get your knitting needles?

Paying taxes is an expression of citizenship. You can’t belong to the club and not pay your dues.

You shouldn’t come into the world with the ambition to pay no taxes. Paying more taxes should be a sign that you made more money — and good for you. We don’t want to ding you for succeeding, but we’re halfway to a plutocracy here.

The richest of the rich want unspeakably high gains with unspeakably low costs. It may not be against the law, but it certainly isn’t right. It’s tacky.

Show some public spirit, Monopoly Men! Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and author of three New York Times best sellers, became an Op-Ed columnist in 1995.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Because of our cumbersome method for enacting tax increases, Coloradans have developed an undeserved reputation as being “anti-tax.”

Colorado’s Constitution creates many barriers to this state having a tax code where the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, but recent polling conducted in Colorado by Hart Research and ALG Research on the Biden administration’s economic agenda from nationally recognized research firms shows strong voter support for investing in workers and families by enacting a fairer tax code.

TABOR (the so-called Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights), adopted in 1992, requires voters to approve any state or local tax increase. But because it also requires confusing and incomplete ballot language that doesn’t mention who would pay or how the money would be used, it’s not surprising voters have rejected more tax measures than they’ve approved.

However, federal tax increases proposed in the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan, the framework for which the Senate approved last week, are broadly popular with Colorado voters. That’s because it’s clear the tax increases will be paid by corporations, the wealthy, and no one making less than $400,000 a year, and the taxes will be used to lower family costs for things like health care, housing, education, and child care.

As popular as those investments are, they’re not the only reason Coloradans support the plan. Nearly 40% of the 400 voters polled said the goal of ensuring the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share in taxes alone is “extremely important.”

It’s easy to guess why ending tax dodging by the rich and corporations is a top priority for Coloradans. It’s not fair that 39 big firms–including FedEx, T-Mobile, and Salesforce—paid zero net federal income taxes over the last three years, even though they collectively made over $120 billion in profits. It’s not fair that the two richest people on the planet, billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, avoided paying any federal income taxes at all in several recent years. Coloradans support efforts to make the tax code fairer.

Two-thirds (66%) of voters back raising taxes on those making over $400,000 a year, including almost three-quarters of unaffiliated voters (72%). Almost 60% support raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, which would still be lower than it was just four years ago.

Far from being anti-tax, Coloradans were more likely to support the tax-and-investment agenda increases when they learned it “would raise nearly $4 trillion [in taxes] from corporations and the wealthy.” That includes two-thirds of unaffiliated voters.

The poll also shows that by a margin of 60% to 33%, Colorado voters want the top tax rate on investment income (currently 20%) to be raised to match the top rate on wage income for those making more than $1 million a year. Coloradans are, in fact, willing to go even further than the White House’s proposal, and support taxing wealth in other ways. There’s no reason the tax rate on income generated from wealth–like selling stock—should be taxed at a much lower rate than the rate on money earned through work. Rewarding work, not wealth, is just common sense.

Like most Coloradans, I know what our taxes pay for. I sent my kids to Colorado public schools, and I love to spend time on public lands enjoying the natural beauty of our home. While our outdated, misleading, and incomplete ballot language leads many to oppose state revenue measures, Coloradans enthusiastically support a fair-share tax agenda like the one currently being proposed in Washington when they have all the facts.

I hope Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper keep in mind when casting their votes that their constituents here in Colorado don’t just support these investments, they support a fair tax system to pay for them.

Carol Hedges is the executive director of the Colorado Fiscal Institute.

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Imagine if Colorado had no state income tax.

Last week at a conservative political conference, Gov. Jared Polis floated the idea of reimagining Colorado’s state tax structure to eliminate income taxes, as nine other states have done.

Polis opined that Colorado’s income tax, “should be zero. We can find another way to generate the revenue that doesn’t discourage productivity and growth and you absolutely can, and we should.” Polis told the conference that he would want the change to be revenue-neutral and that he wouldn’t want to increase sales or property taxes to get it done.

Polis was speaking hypothetically and he made it clear that it wasn’t all or nothing. Indeed, the Colorado legislature would never make this change right now.

However, Polis made it clear that progress in that direction would also be good. And, in fact, Colorado voters in 2020 overwhelming approved Proposition 116 which reduced the state income tax rate from 4.63% to 4.55%.

Colorado voters appear to have an appetite for some downward income tax change and another measure could be placed on the ballot to reduce this amount further next year. Signatures are being gathered until late October to place the income tax reduction to 4.4% on the ballot.

Nine states, Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, don’t tax earned income at all. The states without an income tax still have to pay for infrastructure like roads and schools. Unless you cut services drastically, which is a non-starter in a state like Colorado, residents in these states still pay other taxes to keep the state running, such as sales taxes on purchases or property taxes on homes and businesses.

Colorado is one of 10 states that has a flat income tax rate. Flat taxes subject all Coloradans and incomes to the same singular tax rate (as opposed to our current federal progressive tax system where higher amounts of income are taxed at ever-increasing amounts, known as ‘tax brackets’). A flat tax can be regressive and unfairly disadvantages lower tax earners.

Since taking office, Polis has been a trailblazer on tax reform measures. From helping small businesses by eliminating the business personal property tax, ending state taxes on social security for seniors, funding the state child tax credit for the first time, and doubling the state earned income tax credit, Polis has made tax reform a key agenda of his administration.

But those changes were at the margin. Eliminating income taxes, which totaled an estimated $10.7 billion in fiscal year 2021, would mean serious increases in other existing taxes … for example, that amount is over three times the amount of state sales taxes collected. Personal income taxes make up about two-thirds of the money in Colorado’s General Fund, which is the area of the state budget that covers K-12 education, higher education, public health and public safety, among other things.

Given that these remarks were made at a conservative conference, they could be written off as something said in the heat of the moment. The idea the governor hinted at, that taxes disincentivize work or other investment, might be true, but Colorado’s basically middle of the pack total tax burden was seemingly no impediment to the state’s strong economic rankings pre-pandemic.

In 2012 and 2013, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a believer in the theory that taxes hamper economic growth,  dramatically slashed state income taxes only to have the plan backfire and future legislatures replace the lost revenue to restore public services. A study by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that the performance of its economy during the lower tax period lagged other states. Similar findings were documented by others including the Brookings Institution. In this thought experiment, Polis took care to say he would replace the revenue immediately.

So whether this idea was for real or just part of a “blue sky” conversation remains to be seen. But in the meantime, all Coloradoans have a stake in any change in tax policy and deciding how the state can improve its tax structure.

But a few key questions can guide the next steps: Will a new system be easier to comply with? Is the current tax system too unfair to lower-income groups, a concern of some like Denver-based think tank Bell Policy Center?  Would the new taxes to replace lost income taxes, be predictable, stable, and efficiently collected? Who would pay more and who would pay less and will these shifts be transparent?

Here’s my safest bet: Gov. Polis wasn’t offering a concrete tax reform proposal. There are 10.7 billion reasons why Colorado is not ready to move forward with Plan Zero. But he deserves credit for starting a conversation about creating a better tax system that could be less onerous on some residents and more pro-growth and targeted to more fairly spread the tax burden.

Doug Friednash is a Denver native, a partner with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck and the former chief of staff for Gov. John Hickenlooper.

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Philip Anschutz — Colorado’s benevolent billionaire — should have read the mood in the room before he filed a lawsuit retroactively seeking to apply new federal tax law to get an $8 million Colorado income tax break.

Because the mood right now among those eking out a living in this great state is that we are sick of paying our fair share of taxes while the super-rich use clever accounting tricks to avoid or evade their taxes.

ProPublica this summer released secret IRS records that show billionaires like Jeff Bezos, George Soros, Carl Icahn, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay a relatively small amount in income tax compared to their net-worths, and sometimes nothing.

For example, Bezos paid zero dollars in federal income tax despite reporting an income of $46 million in 2007.

“He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of ‘other expenses,’ ” the ProPublica report said.

Anschutz’s lawsuit exposes the same types of tax avoidance ProPublica found in its investigation, but what’s worse is that the Colorado tax break Anschutz seeks uses an already generous federal tax deduction for wealthy business owners that was expanded and made retroactive under the guise of COVID relief.

Anschutz, unhappy with the federal tax break, is fighting to also get several years of income tax breaks in Colorado, amounting to $8 million. Judge J. Eric Elliff ruled against Anschutz finding that the state tax authorities had the power to promulgate rules prohibiting retroactive deductions like the one Anschutz seeks. Anschutz has appealed.

The deduction that Anschutz is seeking to apply to past Colorado income tax bills is a business loss or “net operating loss” deduction which allows owners of multiple businesses to double count a loss from one pocket as a loss in another pocket.

This complicated tax deduction is intended to shield small business owners with volatile income from year to year from overpaying taxes, but the wealthy have found ways to use it to avoid fair tax assessments.

Let’s say two spouses work in their own small businesses: one runs a preschool and the other owns a small engineering firm. The preschool operated in the red during COVID and lost $100,000 because it was closed for much of the year and the owner still had to pay rent and other expenses. The engineering firm thrived and the owner took home $100,000 in net profit. The couple on their taxes could pay zero in income tax, rightly, since collectively no income was earned.

But there should obviously be a limit to this. A media mogul or oil baron could also, wrongly, earn millions year after year but only pay a fraction of the taxes required on that income by cleverly deploying losses that are carefully manufactured by accountants.

It’s a double-dip in our tax code and the deduction can be carried forward or backward as needed to zero out taxable income.

The Trump tax cuts in 2017 ratcheted down the net-operating loss deductions to only allow 80% of a business’s losses to be deducted from other income. The law also limited how far back the losses could be applied to old tax liabilities and how far into the future they should be carried forward.

But that good reform was undone as part of the CARES Act temporarily taking the deduction back to a 100% allowable deduction. In their infinite wisdom, federal lawmakers also made the deduction retroactive so folks are double-dipping business losses for a total of eight years.

To be fair, Anschutz’s company, AEG, was hit hard by the pandemic. With concert venues shuttered by the government, AEG laid-off workers, and had pay cuts across the board. There’s no doubt Anschutz suffered losses from that company.

But rather than a good public policy to help business owners during a difficult time, the CARES Act treatment of businesses losses feels like an apology from Republicans for slightly reducing a popular deduction no matter how abused it was.

The final straw is Anschutz then trying to also claim the deduction from Colorado income taxes. Colorado income tax is based on federally calculated “adjusted gross income.” Anschutz is arguing that if his adjusted gross income was changed retroactively, he should be able to refile his Colorado taxes to lower the amount of income he reported as taxable.

The judge ruled in favor of the Colorado Department of Revenue finding that it was appropriate for Colorado tax law to be future-looking only, and not retroactively apply changes to federal tax law after taxes had been filed.

Our tax code is broken both in Colorado and at the federal level.

And the solution is easy if there is the political will to do the right thing.

President Joe Biden is working to overhaul the tax code to pay for a progressive wish list of programs. There’s no doubt that America’s extremely low current tax rates on both corporations and individuals are unsustainable.

But if Biden wants to do what Trump failed to do, he should propose a tax code that treats all income equally — regardless of how it is made or spent — with many graduated tax brackets. The federal government should not care if we make our money through stocks or through digging ditches, nor should it care if that money is spent raising children or buying depressed assets.

In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis is eager for tax reform. His proposal of making the state income tax zero, however, is the exact opposite of what this state needs. Property, automobile and sales taxes are based on how people spend their money and are regressive, punishing those who scrimp and save for years to buy items they need and want only to face steep taxes they cannot afford.

A graduated income tax, without distinction or deduction, is the only taxation system that truly has Americans paying their “fair share.” And yes, for the lowest income Coloradans, their fair share may be zero, or in the case of those who qualify for Colorado’s Earned Income Tax Credit, they may even be a net beneficiary of the state when it comes to income tax to help offset the unequal effect of sales and property taxes, not to mention rising fees on car registration.

This of course is a pipe dream. There is almost no political will for real tax reform, as we saw when Republicans attempted this in 2017 and ended up slashing the corporate tax rate while not eliminating a significant number of tax breaks or loopholes.

Biden is targeting the wealthy and corporations with his tax increases, which after the ProPublica piece seems like a logical place to start fixing this mess. Once the rich start paying their fair share, I’ll start writing more about how my effective federal income tax rate under Trump and Biden has plummeted to nearly zero.

But for now, I think billionaires like Anschutz should stop complaining about Biden’s tax plans and stop stretching for another tax break. Perhaps the ultra-wealthy in America should try being grateful for what they have.

Megan Schrader is editor of The Denver Post’s opinion pages.

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By Ellis Simani, Robert Faturechi and Ken Ward Jr., ProPublica

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

As a member of Congress, Jared Polis was one of the loudest Democrats demanding President Donald Trump release his tax returns.

At a rally in Denver in 2017, he warned the crowd that Trump “might have something to hide.” That same year, on the floor of the House, he introduced a resolution to force the president to release the records, calling them an “important baseline disclosure.”

But during Polis’ successful run for governor of Colorado in 2018, his calls for transparency faded. The dot-com tycoon turned investor broke with recent precedent and refused to disclose his returns, blaming his Republican opponent, who wasn’t disclosing his.

Polis may have had other reasons for denying requests to release the records.

Despite a net worth estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, Polis paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2013, 2014 and 2015. From 2010 to 2018, his overall rate was just 8.2% — less than half of the 19% paid by a worker making $45,000 in 2018.

The revelations about Polis are contained in a trove of tax information obtained by ProPublica covering thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people. The Colorado governor is one of several ultrarich politicians who, the data shows, have paid little or no federal income taxes in multiple years, exploited loopholes to dodge estate taxes or used their public offices to fight reforms that would increase their tax bills.

The records show that rich Democrats and Republicans alike have slashed their taxes using strategies unavailable to most of their constituents. Among them are governors, members of Congress and a cabinet secretary.

Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, said the tax avoidance of these top politicians is “very, very worrisome” since both parties “spend like crazy” and depend on taxes to fund their priorities, from the military to Medicare to Social Security.

“They have the power to decide how much the rest of us pay and the power to spend the money, and then they’re not paying their fair share?” Painter said. “That should be troubling to voters, both conservative and liberal. It should be troubling for everyone.”

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, for example, is a Republican coal magnate who has made the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. Yet he’s paid very little or no federal income taxes for almost every year since 2000.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, one of the richest people in Congress, was one of the few Republicans to break with his party during the 2017 tax overhaul to fight for a deduction that — unbeknownst to the public — helped him avoid millions in taxes.

And the tax records of Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, showed that both employed a loophole, which was accidentally created by Congress, to escape estate and gift taxes.

As ProPublica has revealed in a series of articles this year, these tactics, if sometimes aggressive, are completely legal. And they’re not universal among wealthy politicians. ProPublica reviewed tax data for a couple dozen wealthy current and former government officials. Their data shows that many of them paid relatively high tax rates while employing more modest use of the fairly standard deductions of the rich.

The politicians who paid little or exploited loopholes either defended their practices as completely proper or declined to comment.

“The Governor has paid every cent of taxes he owes, he has championed tax reform and tax fairness to fix this broken system for everybody, to report otherwise would be inaccurate,” Polis’ spokesperson wrote in an email.

— — —

During the late 1990s dot-com era, Polis earned a reputation as a boy wonder. He turned his parents’ small greeting card company into a website, bluemountain.com, which was among the first to enable users to send free virtual cards. He and his family sold the site in 1999 for $780 million.

With the windfall from the sale, Polis continued to start new ventures and invest, but he also began laying the groundwork for a career in politics. He landed in the governor’s office in 2019 when he was just 43.

One of his tools for raising his profile was philanthropy. His generous donations to charity became a theme of both his 2008 run for Congress and his 2018 run for Colorado’s highest office.

Philanthropy also helped keep his tax rate enviably low. In many years, the deductions he claimed for his charitable giving were large enough to wipe out half the income he would have owed taxes on. His giving allowed him, in essence, to take some of the money he would have paid into the public coffers and donate it instead to causes of his choosing.

But an examination of Polis’ philanthropy shows that while he has given to a wide variety of causes, some of his donations served to promote him, blurring the lines between charity and campaigning.

According to the tax filings of his charity, the Jared Polis Foundation, the organization spent more than $2 million from 2001 to 2008 on a semiannual mailer sent to “hundreds of thousands of households throughout Colorado” that was intended to build “on a foundation of familiarity with Jared Polis’ name and his support of public education.” It was one of the charity’s largest expenditures.

A 2005 edition of the mailer reviewed by ProPublica had the feel of a campaign ad. It was emblazoned with the title “Jared Polis Education Report,” included his name six times on the cover and featured photos of Polis, a former state board of education member, surrounded by smiling school children.

The newsletters were discontinued just as he was elected. Because the mailers did not explicitly advocate for his election, they would have been legally allowed as a charitable expenditure.

A decade later, when he ran for governor in a race that he personally poured more than $20 million into, Polis featured his philanthropy in his campaign. In one ad, he used testimonials from an employee and a graduate of a business training charity he founded for military veterans.

Polis’ spokesperson, Victoria Graham, defended the mailers, saying they were intended “to promote innovations and successful models in public education and to raise awareness for the challenges facing public education.” She also pointed to a range of other philanthropy Polis was involved in, from founding charter schools, which she noted were not named after him, to distributing computers to organizations in need.

“His philanthropy is not and has never been motivated by receiving a tax write-off, and to state otherwise is not only inaccurate but fabricating motives and intent and cynical in its view of charity,” Graham said.

While Polis’ charitable giving has helped keep the percentage of his income he pays in taxes low, he has also been able to keep his total taxable income relatively small by using another strategy common among the wealthy: investing in businesses that grow in value but produce minimal income.

It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s a basic principle of the U.S. tax system — one that typically benefits wealthy people who can afford not to take income. Investments only trigger income taxes when they produce “realized” gains, such as dividends from a stock holding, the sale of an asset or profits from a company. But an investment’s growth in value, while it makes its owner richer, is not taxable.

Polis acknowledged his use of the strategy in 2008 after he released tax information during his first run for Congress and faced criticism for paying so little in taxes. “I founded several high-growth companies, and we would manage those for growth rather than for profit,” he said. “When I make money, I pay taxes. When I don’t make money, I don’t.”

In one of the recent years Polis paid no income taxes, his losses were larger than his income. In two of the years, it was about a million dollars. From 2010 to 2018, when he paid an overall rate of just 8.2%, including payroll taxes, his income averaged $1.5 million.

During that period of low taxes and relatively low income, Polis’ estimated net worth rose sharply. Members of Congress only have to report the value of each of their assets in ranges, so assigning a precise number is impossible. But the nonprofit data site OpenSecrets, which makes estimates by taking the midpoint of the ranges, shows Polis’ wealth growing from $143 million in 2010 to $306 million in 2017, making him the third richest-member of the House at the time. (Graham said congressional disclosure forms are confusingly formatted, potentially causing certain assets to be counted more than once, “so these numbers are likely wildly off.” She did not provide alternative net worth figures.)

One of Polis’ primary vehicles for building his fortune, while avoiding taxable income, appears to have been a family office, Jovian Holdings. The board of directors included his father, sister and a rather surprising outsider: Arthur Laffer. The famed conservative economist’s Laffer Curve provided the Reagan administration with the intellectual basis for arguing that cutting taxes would increase tax revenue. (Polis’ sister is a ProPublica donor.)

The term family office has a mom-and-pop feel, but it is actually part of the infrastructure of protecting the fortunes of the ultrawealthy, from crafting investment and tax strategy to succession and estate planning to concierge services. Depending on how they’re organized, for instance as a business, their costs — the salaries of the staff, rent — can be deductible.

One of the executives at Polis’ family office, according to her LinkedIn profile, is a seasoned tax expert who specializes in “maximizing cost savings both operationally and with all taxing authorities.” She removed that detail around the time ProPublica approached Polis about his taxes.

Unlike ordinary investors, Polis was able to claim millions in deductions for some of the costs of his money management, specifically his family office, which contributed to lowering his tax burden. Ironically, the investment apparatus that helped Polis avoid taxable income became a tax break.

ProPublica discussed the scenario, without naming Polis, with Bob Lord, tax counsel for the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness. He said the public appears to be essentially subsidizing Polis’ investing while getting little in return. With a typical business, he said, you get the tax break but also relatively quickly make taxable income.

The costs of a family office are “being taken even though the income may be way out in the future. It’s just a giveaway,” Lord said. “What is the public getting from it? This really, really rich politician gets to shelter his income while his investments grow and doesn’t pay tax on it until he sells.”

Deferring paying taxes is a valuable perk. But the strategy, Lord said, may allow Polis an even more lucrative outcome. Now that Polis has made his fortune, he may be able to largely dodge the tax system forever. Should he die before selling his investments, his heirs would never owe income taxes on the growth.

Graham acknowledged that the tax system unfairly benefits the wealthy but said Polis is not purposely avoiding income that would result in taxes.

“The Governor has long championed tax reforms precisely because the income tax is inadequate and a mismatched way to tax most wealthy people who do not have a regular income but who make money in other ways and should be taxed,” she said. “Since 2006, Governor Polis has paid over $20 million in taxes on the money he earned on his gains and he has championed tax reforms that would lower the tax burden on middle-income earners and eliminate loopholes to ensure higher earners pay their share.”

— — —

ProPublica’s data shows that at least two federal officials have already taken steps to preserve their family fortunes for their heirs, exploiting loopholes that divert revenue from the federal government.

Scott, the Florida senator who ran one of the world’s largest health care companies, and DeVos, Trump’s education secretary and believed to be the richest member of his cabinet, have both stored assets in grantor retained annuity trusts — a form of trust used to avoid gift and estate taxes.

GRATs, as they’re commonly known, were accidentally created by Congress in 1990. Lawmakers were trying to close another estate tax loophole and in doing so unintentionally paved the way for another one. The lawyer who pioneered the trusts estimated in 2013 that they had cost the federal government about $100 billion over the prior 13 years.

To use this tax-avoidance technique, you put an asset, like stocks or real estate, into a trust assigned to your heirs. The trust pays you back the starting value of the asset (plus some interest). If the original asset rises in value, the gains can go to your heirs tax-free.

GRATs have become widely used among the superrich. A ProPublica investigation found that more than half of the nation’s richest individuals have employed them and other trusts to avoid estate taxes.

It’s unclear from ProPublica’s data how much DeVos, 63, and Scott, 68, were able to transfer tax-free.

DeVos and her husband employed a GRAT from at least 2000 to 2003. DeVos’ father was a wealthy industrialist. Her husband was the president of Amway, a multilevel marketing company that focuses on health, beauty and home products. Her family is believed to be worth billions.

Her causes both before and during her time in government depended on tax dollars. As a donor and fundraiser for Republican causes, she pushed for charter schools and government subsidies to allow parents to send their kids to private schools. As education secretary, she pushed to send millions of federal dollars intended for public schools to private and religious schools instead.

Scott, one of the wealthiest senators, with a net worth likely in the hundreds of millions, used a GRAT for much longer, from at least 2001 through 2009. His tax data shows the assets in the trust — stakes of a private investment fund and family partnership he and his wife created — receiving millions in income.

When he was in the private sector, Scott benefited from federal programs like Medicare, which are funded by taxes. He built and ran Columbia/HCA, a massive chain of for-profit hospitals. After a fraud investigation became public, he resigned and the company paid $1.7 billion to settle allegations it overbilled government health programs. Scott has previously emphasized that he was never charged, though he acknowledged the company made mistakes.

Scott declined to comment. Nick Wasmiller, a spokesman for DeVos, said she “pays her taxes in full as required by law. Your ‘reporting’ is not only factually wrong but also doubles-down on the criminal actions that underpin ProPublica’s political campaign to prop up the Biden Administration’s failing agenda.”

— — —

California Congressman Darrell Issa was one of a handful of Republicans who bucked his party in 2017 and voted against Trump’s tax overhaul.

Issa said he opposed the legislation because it all but eliminated the deduction taxpayers could take on their federal returns for state and local taxes. That provision was particularly contentious in high tax blue states like California, but most Republicans from his state still fell in line. The other GOP congressman in the San Diego area, for example, voted yes.

Limiting the write-off, known as the SALT deduction, was one of the few progressive changes in the Trump tax law. The deduction had long disproportionately benefited the wealthiest because they pay the most in state and local taxes. According to one projection, if the cap were removed from the deduction, households with income in the top 1% would reap the most benefit, paying $31,000 less a year on average — amounting to more than half of the total taxes avoided through the write-off. The top 25% of households would average less than $3,000 in savings a year, and the savings drop precipitously from there, with most households deriving no benefit.

In interviews and public statements, Issa said in fighting to preserve the deduction, he was defending the interests of middle-class taxpayers. “I didn’t come to Washington to raise taxes on my constituents,” he said at the time, “and I do not plan to start today.”

It’s true that more than 40% of taxpayers in Issa’s former district, a relatively affluent swath of Southern California, were able to make at least some use of the deduction.

But the 68-year-old congressman, who made a fortune in the car alarm business, was in the top echelon of its beneficiaries. Between 2003 and 2017, his tax data shows, Issa generally paid a relatively high tax rate but was able to claim more than $51 million in write-offs thanks to the SALT deduction, an average of more than $3 million a year.

By contrast, households in his district that made between $100,000 and $200,000 and took the SALT deduction claimed an average of $14,843 in 2017.

Issa’s spokesman, Jonathan Wilcox, declined to say if the SALT deduction’s impact on the congressman’s taxes factored into his decision to advocate for it.

“So much stupid,” Wilcox said. “Be sure to write back if you ever do better than trolling for garbage.”

— — —

Gov. Jim Justice is believed to be the richest person in West Virginia, controlling vast reserves of valuable steelmaking coal and owning The Greenbrier luxury resort. He made an appearance in 2014 on the Forbes list of 400 wealthiest Americans. Estimates of his net worth have ranged from the hundreds of millions to well over a billion.

Nonetheless, he’s paid little or no federal income taxes for almost every year between 2000 and 2018, ProPublica’s trove of tax records shows. In 12 of those years he paid nothing, and in all but two of those years, his rate didn’t exceed 4%.

His largest tax payment came in 2009, when his family sold off much of its mining holdings to a Russian company for more than half a billion dollars. That year, after deductions, his tax rate rose to a modest 13.4%.

In more recent years, Justice, 70, has reported tens of millions in losses each year. That not only helped him to minimize his federal income taxes, it also allowed him to apply those losses to his profits from previous years — and get refunds for the taxes he initially paid in those years.

Justice’s income was low enough in 2018 for his family to qualify for and receive a $2,400 coronavirus stimulus check, aid meant for low- and middle-income Americans.

The recent years of large losses reported on Justice’s tax returns have coincided with real signs of financial problems. The coal industry’s fortunes have rapidly declined. He’s been hounded for unpaid bills and loans. The Russian company that bought much of his coal empire sued him and got him to buy back the assets — at a much discounted price but attached to significant debt. Forbes knocked him off its wealth ranking, citing escalating battles with two major lenders over unpaid debt. Justice’s representatives have said he pays what he owes, and his business empire is in good shape.

But even before his empire began showing significant cracks, Justice was reporting losses or little income for a man so wealthy. From 1996 to 2008, Justice, who received a coal and farming fortune from his father, who died in 1993, either reported losses to the IRS or just a few hundred thousand dollars in income.

The disconnect could be explained by the generous deductions afforded to coal business owners.

For example, owners are allowed a depletion deduction, which allows them to take 10% of the revenue from coal they extract and write it off against their profit. This spin on depreciation can have outsized benefits because unlike normal depreciation — in which the write-offs are based on how much you paid for an asset — the write-off amount here faces no such limit, and can therefore exceed the initial investment. The deduction has been criticized by environmentalists and congressional Democrats as an overly generous giveaway.

Another benefit coal owners get is the ability to immediately expense much of their mine development costs on their taxes instead of being forced to stretch such deductions over a longer period of time. Justice has said that in the 15 years after his father’s death, he oversaw “a massive expansion of multiple businesses which included significant coal reserve expansion” — development that could have provided him with a significant stockpile of such write-offs. (ProPublica has previously reported on other generous write-offs. Sports team owners, for example, are allowed to deduct the value of their intangible assets — such as media deals and franchise rights — as wasting assets, even as they rise in value.)

Experts said this could explain how Justice could have reported negative income of $15 million in 2008, a year in which Mechel, the Russian company that subsequently bought much of his family’s coal empire, said that business alone produced about $94 million in EBITDA — a common measure of a business’ profitability before taxes and some other expenses.

Justice declined to answer a list of specific questions about his taxes. In a statement, his lawyer, Steve Ruby, said Justice “has paid millions upon millions of dollars in state and federal income taxes and has always followed the law. In many years, his businesses have suffered losses as the result of weak coal prices combined with substantial outlays to save jobs at local businesses that other companies were abandoning.

“When many other coal producers were filing for bankruptcy, the Justice companies persevered and refused to take the easy way out through a bankruptcy proceeding, a decision that contributed to those losses. Like any other taxpayer, Gov. Justice does not owe income taxes in years in which his income is negative,” the statement read.

Ruby confirmed that Justice received coronavirus stimulus checks but said he did not cash them.

Like Scott and DeVos, Justice has used GRATs to sidestep estate and gift taxes, his returns and court records suggest.

In 2008, the year before he sold much of his coal empire to the Russian company, two GRATs appeared on his returns for the first time. And when the Russian company sued Justice, it also sued him in his capacity as the trustee for those GRATs. Justice had placed at least some of the coal assets into the trusts before the sale, according to the lawsuit.

Ruby’s statement did not address Justice’s use of GRATs.

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Tax day should be a day of mourning in the United States.

The federal government rakes in money from those living on its soil, both citizens and non-permanent residents, in such an arbitrary and capricious way that is both unfair and unjust.

ProPublica just released another analysis of leaked tax returns from the IRS showing that from 2013 to 2018, the 400 Americans reporting the most income – Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Jan Koum, Ken Griffin, etc. — paid income tax rates well below the top tax bracket rate of 37% or even often below the supposedly fail-safe Alternative Minimum Tax rate of 28%. Bloomberg clocked in with the lowest effective tax rate at just 4.1%, Gates 18.4%, Koum 19.1%, and Griffin 29.2%.

Notably, Coloradans Stan Kroenke and his wife Ann Walton Kroenke made the list and paid an average effective tax rate of 14%.

The average effective income tax rates for those making between $40,000 and $50,000 was 5% during those years and for those making between $200,000 and $500,000, it was 29%, according to ProPublica.

And yet, there is zero political will to fix the problem.

Enter Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

When details of his low tax bills were released by ProPublica in November, The Denver Post wrote an editorial calling for Polis, who paid an average tax rate of 8.2% from 2010 to 2018 and was not on the list of 400 top earners, to help us fix the broken tax code.

To his credit, the governor took us up on the offer. He sat down with The Denver Post to detail how he was able to pay so little in federal income taxes, and what can be done to fix the tax code.

The answer is relatively simple, considering the tax code is estimated to be at least 70,000 pages: net operating loss deductions and the reduced tax rate (15% to 20%) on capital gains. Polis is a proponent of reducing the generous net operating loss deduction and taxing capital gains at the same rate as any other income.

Like many of the individuals on ProPublica’s top 400 analyses, Polis is an entrepreneur, predominately in the tech industry. Polis has never drawn a traditional salary from companies, the kind that would generate a W2, but rather his money came in big tranches of cash either when his businesses went public or sold.

“I started a Spanish movie theater chain, lost most of my money in that, two restaurants, two or three other tech companies that failed,” Polis said. “As any entrepreneur, three successes is considered really good, many are happy with one or two, so I’ve had probably 12 failures and three successes.”

On his successes – like the 2005 and 2007 public offerings and sale of ProFlowers – Polis said he paid “big taxes” roughly 20% capital gains on millions of dollars in income. Polis said that money should have been taxed as regular income, which at the time would have been 35%.

On his losses – like the approximately $9 million loss on a single start-up around 2009-2010 — Polis could then deduct those losses from future income (it’s important to note that Polis donated his salary while he was in Congress and had relatively little capital gains income from his assets in a blind trust and other money from legacy investments in the start-up incubator TechStars).

Polis’ taxes fall under the alternative minimum tax system where he isn’t able to use some deductions (including those from his family business Jovian Holdings, mortgage interest or state and local taxes), but he is still able to use the alternative net operating loss deduction and also deduct charitable contributions.

“You can see why in the same year it’s obvious you should – you make $3 million here you lose $2 million there you really made a million; you can even argue why maybe just because it’s a different calendar year. But clearly, there needs to be either a time limit on it or you could just step it down over time,” Polis said.

He wants to be clear that he never used the “egregious” loophole whereby some extremely wealthy individuals forego even capital gains when they have a major taxable event, by instead borrowing money on unrealized investments.

“You can actually borrow against your gain instead of recognizing it and then you … pay a low-interest rate of 2% but that is lower than paying 20% all at once,” Polis explained. His solution? Tax as ordinary income money that is received as a loan based on a person’s net-worth.

Both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were able to avoid significant federal income taxes by living off of loans rather than realizing gains and paying taxes. Musk recently was forced to sell stocks and pay capital gains tax but only because he got squeezed by a loan payment coming due and the opportunity to exercise stock options.

Other reasonable measures would be to disallow tax deductions on donations that go to a family foundation or to reduce the allowable deduction to 50% of the donation, giving the wealthy an incentive to direct their donations directly to charities rather than funneling them through a foundation that can blur the lines between charity and a small business pays executives a lot to give out what remains once their salaries, retirement and expenses are paid.

These are simple fixes within the existing tax code that could start making it so America truly has a graduated tax system that is not regressive and is not balanced on the backs of upper-middle-class Americans. Congress can get this done by August if others take the moral high ground, as Polis has done, and talk openly about their tax advantages and how to make the system fairer.

Tax day could be a celebration in a wealthy country where everyone pays their fair share.

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Democrats are excited to spread the word about a program they’re calling the “Colorado Cashback,” which is set to send income taxpayers checks of $750 — joint filers will get $1,500 — starting in the coming weeks.

Their messaging on this program typically omits some critical details, including that the projected $2.74 billion they’ll use for these checks is part of a pool of money that the state Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) requires be refunded. Coloradans who aren’t educated about TABOR may not understand that the money isn’t exactly being sent to them by choice of their elected leaders.

But there’s something else largely missing from the political messaging: In order to send checks in equal amounts to all qualifying taxpayers, the legislature has actually taken quite a bit of money away from higher-income taxpayers, transferring more of the windfall from historically flush state coffers over to poorer people.

An updated fiscal analysis released Friday by nonpartisan staff for Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee shows that people with the highest incomes will each receive nearly $1,000 less than they otherwise would have as a result of the legislature’s recent, temporary change to how — and when — TABOR refunds are administered. Those earning the lowest wages, meanwhile, will see more than $200 more each, the fiscal analysis shows.

What to expect

TABOR requires that the state reimburse any tax revenues that come in above a cap set by an equation that factors in population growth plus inflation. (Many, especially on the left, believe this is an imperfect and flawed way to draw the line.) The state usually hasn’t eclipsed that cap, but in the 2021-22 fiscal year that wrapped at the end of June, Colorado took in far more of a TABOR surplus than ever before — more than $3.5 billion, in fact. The state will finalize numbers from last fiscal year this winter, though the current projected totals aren’t expected to change much.

The $3.5 billion will be returned to taxpayers in three ways: first, through one-time property tax relief for seniors and veterans; second, through a small, one-time cut to the state’s flat income tax rate; third, through the new and also one-time “cashback” program; and, finally, by running the money left over after the first three mechanisms through a six-tiered system that gives more money to higher earners and less to lower earners.

The first two mechanisms account for only a fraction of the state’s total TABOR refund obligation — the property tax relief is expected to cost about $161 million, while the temporary income tax cut will cover about $148 million. Had the Democrat-run legislature not passed Senate Bill 233 earlier this year, then there would be no “cashback” checks this year, and the vast majority of the billions that remained would be run through the six tiers.

In that alternate reality, the richest tier — that is, those earning at least $265,000 — would each get back about $2,000, plus whatever additional savings they might get from those first two mechanisms.

How the numbers break down

Nonpartisan state budget staff has tallied this one-time rich-to-poor transfer of tax money as follows. (These numbers do not account for any savings from the property tax relief or the income tax cut.)

• Tier 1 (up to $47,000): This group comprises a plurality among the six tiers, as nonpartisan staff projects that about 35% of income taxpayers in Colorado earned under $47,000 last year. Single-filer members of this tier would have gotten back about $640 in refunds each, but now will each get back about $851 — $750 checks, plus about $100 because of remaining money that will be run through the typical six-tier formula. That’s an expected gain of $211 per person, or $422 for joint filers.
• Tier 2 ($47,001 to $95,000): This is the second-largest group among the six tiers, covering about 27% of Colorado income taxpayers. Members of this group would have received about $853 each, and as a result of SB22-233, they’ll get about $885. That’s an expected gain of $32 per person, or $64 for joint filers.
• Tier 3 ($95,001 to $150,000): This group, comprising an estimated 17% of Colorado income taxpayers, would have received $982 each before SB22-233, and will now receive about $905. That’s an expected loss of $77 per person, or $154 for joint filers.
• Tier 4 ($150,001 to $208,000): The roughly 9% of Coloradans in this group would’ve been set to receive about $1,167 prior to SB22-233, but will now get about $935. That’s an expected loss of $232 per person, or $464 for joint filers.
• Tier 5 ($208,001 to $265,000): This is the smallest group among the six tiers, covering an estimated 4% of Colorado income taxpayers. Members of this group would have received about $1,256 each, and now will instead receive about $949 each. That’s an expected loss of $307 per person, or $614 for joint filers.
• Tier 6 ($265,000+): Members of this top income tier, which covers an estimated 7% of Colorado income taxpayers, would have been set to receive about $2,020 each, prior to SB22-233. They’re now expected to receive $1,069 each. That’s an expected loss of $951 per person, or $1,902 for joint filers.

The timing

One thing the Democrats who championed SB22-233 — it received Republican votes, but it was very much a Democratic project — can credibly claim credit for is moving the refund delivery up significantly. Absent legislative intervention, the tax refund money would not have reached people until next tax season. Now, because of SB22-233, the checks will go out much sooner. (The rest of the refund benefits, including any amounts left over, after the checks, to be run through the six-tier system, will go out next tax season as usual.) The state treasurer’s staff told The Denver Post that the checks began printing this week, and the governor’s office said that checks will hit the mail “in early to mid-August.” The governor’s office also said that for people filing their taxes late, up until Oct. 17, refund checks will be mailed in December or January.

The decision made by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee to release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns was absolutely in the best interests of Americans, even if their motivations were wrong.

We are cynical that now the committee will suddenly use Trump’s taxes as a rallying call for reform to a broken tax system that likely benefits them as well.

Already, the members of the committee are framing the narrative as though this is a Trump problem and not a tax policy problem that has existed for decades.

“Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., a Ways and Means Committee member, said in a news release. “As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.”

In fact, it is not exclusively a Trump problem. The rot runs deep, and it is codified in a system that has become an unenforceable (dis)honor system for many of the wealthiest Americans.

Gov. Jared Polis’ leaked tax documents showed he was able to use the overly generous and extremely poorly thought out business loss deduction loophole to avoid taxes for years after he lost money in business dealings. Polis showed us his mettle when he turned around and advocated for reforms to the law so that only a portion of business losses could be deducted and capping how many years forward a loss could be carried.

Sen. Michael Bennet blamed the investors managing his accounts for investments that shorted loans to the Puerto Rican government and profited off of the default on those loans. The Daily Beast reported that Bennet has millions in off-shore accounts that are notorious tax havens.

We hope the Trump tax revelations – similar to the tax returns leaked and published by ProPublica over the past couple of years – will motivate voters to make tax reform for the very wealthy a top priority. If releasing Trump’s tax documents leads to a Republican vendetta to release other tax returns of wealthy members of Congress, the White House or even federal courts, then let the light shine on our inequitable taxes. Change will never come without transparency, even if transparency must come in the form of a petty tit-for-tat.

Americans should be outraged that as the middle class toiled for decades under an unavoidable tax burden of 10% to 20% of our adjusted gross income, men and women at the upper ends of the income strata were able to evade and avoid their fair share by deploying all kinds of shelters and questionable tactics.

To Trump’s credit, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did make the tax system more equitable, doubling the standard deduction in a recognition that middle-class folks couldn’t abuse itemized deductions to the same offsetting tax effect as rich Americans. But the tax bill also doled out substantial cuts for the wealthy, perhaps making the equalizing effect of the standard deduction and the increased child tax credit deleterious.

According to The New York Times analysis of the documents released, “Trump reported nearly $16 million in business losses in 2020, which swamped his other income and left him with no federal income tax liability.”

The losses were so great that he will be able to carry some of it forward to avoid taxes in future years. Some carry forward may be reasonable but consider that there is no limit to how long someone could carry such losses. Every American suffers financial losses from bad investments, but if an American loses his or her job and suffers a drastic reduction in income for a single year, he or she is not able to average out their income over several years to reduce their tax burden in other years. It’s just not how the system works for ordinary people, and that is not how the system should work for the rich.

We are disappointed that the committee did not release more documents with the tax returns, including notes from IRS audits which they had previously said they would release.

The bitter divide in Washington could end up bringing Americans closer together as we prioritize putting people in office who are willing to vote against their own personal interests to implement a tax policy that requires everyone to pay their fair share without exception, exemption, privilege or priority.

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