Colorado has become infamous for its Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, a constitutional amendment restricting growth in revenue collections to an arbitrary "population-plus-inflation" formula. Although TABOR has had significant negative effects on Colorado's finances, similar proposals have surfaced in at least 30 states over the past decade. None of these proposals were approved, and in five states they were placed directly on a state-wide ballot where they were rejected by voters. Even in Colorado itself, citizens voted to suspend TABOR for five years in an effort to allow the s

State and local tax codes include a huge array of special tax breaks designed to accomplish almost every goal imaginable: from encouraging homeownership and scientific research, to building radioactive fallout shelters and caring for "exceptional" trees. Despite being embedded in the tax code, these programs are typically enacted with tax policy issues like fairness, efficiency, and sustainability only as secondary considerations. Accordingly, these programs have long been called "tax expenditures." They are essentially government spending programs that happen to be housed in the tax code for ease of administration, political expedience, or both.

Tax incentives are intended to spur economic growth that would not have otherwise occurred. More specifically, these narrowly targeted tax breaks are usually offered in an attempt to convince businesses to relocate, hire, and/or invest within a state's borders.

Sales taxes are an important revenue source, comprising close to half of all state revenues in 2012. But sales taxes are also inherently regressive because the lower a family's income, the more of its income the family must spend on things subject to the tax.

In the public debates over federal immigration reform, much has been made of the argument that undocumented immigrants would be a drain on federal, state and local government resources if granted legal status under reform. But it is also true that the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States are already taxpayers, and that their local, state and federal tax contributions would increase under reform.