Taxpayer Bill Of Rights (TABOR)

Hold up: the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, TABOR, can mean different things depending on the context. Why can’t lawmakers be more creative with names? Somebody send a carmaker over there.

Anywho, one of the TABORs is under the IRS. The IRS has a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, defining all of your rights as a U.S. taxpayer. You have the right to be informed about IRS decisions about your taxes, the right to dispute and appeal IRS decisions, the right for the IRS to not be a d*#% during audits...things like that. This TABOR was passed into law by Congress in the 1980s, and updated in 1996, so it’s the law...not just the IRS being nice.

The more controversial type of TABOR is the one that limits a government’s power to tax their people, oftentimes based on measures like inflation and population...a fan favorite of libertarians and conservatives.

This isn’t too common, but Colorado is known for taking the daring TABOR plunge. While Oregon, Nebraska, and Maine all toyed with a Taxpayer Bill of Rights to put a cap on the states’ ability to tax its people, none of them took the jump.

Colorado is the lone weirdo to this day. Advocates are happy they get to keep their money, and hope that the bureaucrats are being more efficient with what they have. Meanwhile, critics point out that Colorado is the 48th state for higher education spending and 44th in road repair spending, which means TABOR could be hurting the economy more than it’s helping.