Your taxes: a basic overview

There are two primary ways that you directly contribute tax dollars to Boulder County: property taxes on the property you own and sales and use taxes. Sales taxes are collected at the point of purchase when you buy retail goods within Boulder County, and use taxes are assessed on motor vehicles (collected during vehicle registration) and on building and construction materials purchased at retail (collected when a building permit is obtained).

Property taxes

Property taxes within Boulder County vary according to your location within municipal and special district boundaries. Received collectively by the Boulder County Treasurer, your property taxes are then apportioned to the various governmental agencies and special tax districts to which you belong, including your local school district, fire protection district, municipality and/or water district. In all, there are 88 taxing authorities (i.e., entities that receive a portion of your property taxes each year) in Boulder County alone.

Boulder County receives approximately 30% of your total property taxes and uses those funds to provide essential services directly to residents as well as indirectly through funding for local non-profits.

Sales and Use Taxes

Sales and use taxes are collected by the State of Colorado and reapportioned back to the counties and municipalities in which they were collected. Boulder County receives less than 1%* of the value of all purchases made in Boulder County. For more information on sales and use taxes in Boulder County, download the 2008 Sales and Use Tax brochure (PDF).

*The total sales tax rate in Boulder County varies from location to location based on varying municipal sales tax rates. The sales tax rate for Boulder County government is currently set at 0.65% and applies to all purchases made within county boundaries. 

Each year, the Boulder County Budget Office produces a Budget Summary providing an overview of the County's total revenues, expenditures, and distribution of property taxes.

• 2008 Budget Summary (PDF)
• 2007 Budget Summary (PDF)
• 2006 Budget Summary (PDF)

Meeting community needs every day

The Boulder County tax dollars that you pay, whether through property taxes or sales and use taxes, help support key infrastructure and services such as transportation, road maintenance, public safety/wildfire mitigation and emergency services, elections, conservation and sanitation, and general governmental operating costs.

Combined with a variety of other funding sources, your tax dollars also contribute to help provide a breadth of other services that collectively create a healthy community. Through funding supplied by grants, state and federal allocations, your local taxes, fees and other revenue sources, Boulder County government is able to offer:

• Health programs that provide vaccinations, protect the public health and educate community members
• Community Service programs that enable career growth, encourage self-sufficiency, involve children, families and aging adults in beneficial activities, and promote financial stability and homeownership

• Social Services programs that protect the welfare of children and older adults

• Financial support to non-profit organizations that are at the very heart of our community and provide essential services
• A countywide Sustainability Initiative to preserve the health of our environment into the future, including pollution prevention, waste reduction and energy and resource conservation.
• Parks and Open Space programs that protect local habitat and provide beautiful places to catch a breath of fresh air and get some exercise
• Transportation improvements that help make our roads and transit programs better, safer and more accessible for all members of the community

Your generosity makes a difference

In addition to paying property taxes, voters in Boulder County continuously show their commitment to investing in and improving their community by passing special ballot issues that enact specific property or sales and use taxes.

Some of these special tax funds include:

• Developmental Disabilities and Health and Human Services: Funding for local nonprofits and programs that serve the developmentally disabled; funding to support health and human services programs that have suffered funding cutbacks from other sources.
   
• Worthy Cause: funding for capital improvement projects by local human services non-profit agencies
   
• Open space: various taxes to support acquisition, trails and maintenance of open space.
   
• 2005 Issue 1A: A TABOR exemption that provides funding for public safety, sustainability and health and human services programs
   
• Public Safety Sales Tax: provides funds for a jail expansion, construction of an addiction recovery center, and ongoing support for jail programs.
   
• Transportation improvements, including increased transit, regional trails and bikeway shoulders.

Questions? Email colist@bouldercounty.org