Earlier this month, facing a sink full of dishes and a kitchen filled with the physical evidence of a weekend well spent, I did what any other hungry, financially responsible college student would do on a Sunday morning — I turned to DoorDash.
Having the misfortune of already knowing about Colorado’s Retail Delivery Fee, I expected to overpay for a lukewarm breakfast. Because paying someone else to drive essentially the same trip deserves its own tax. Sorry, I mean “fee.”
For those unfamiliar, the Retail Delivery Fee is exactly what it sounds like: a charge imposed on nearly every retail delivery made by a motor vehicle in Colorado. It was created by Senate Bill 21-260 and passed by a Democratic majority in 2021. The bill established the fee at 27 cents but also created a mechanism for the Department of Revenue to adjust the charge annually for inflation.
In short, lawmakers created a fee that could be ratcheted up on a yearly basis, even though Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) prohibits tax increases without voter approval.
What I didn’t realize that Sunday morning, however, was that the latest increase had taken effect. It wasn’t until I noticed the extra three cents on my receipt that I wondered whether the fee had changed. A quick search of the Department of Revenue’s published fee schedule confirmed it. The Retail Delivery Fee rate had quietly increased from 28 cents at the end of June to 31 cents on July 1.
Pavement cracked on the road to hell
Supporters of the fee arguably meant well. Colorado’s roads, bridges, and transportation system need improvement. Just ask the Colorado drivers who pay roughly $3000 in repairs annually in some parts of the state. Those same supporters may also be correct that 31 cents is unlikely to make or break any Coloradan’s budget. But that’s not really the point. Good intentions don’t excuse eroding taxpayer trust by increasingly pushing through new fees just to avoid putting revenue increases before Colorado voters, as the state Constitution demands.
The Retail Delivery Fee is not unique. It is part of a broader shift in how Colorado collects revenue, with majority Democrats having shot down efforts to repeal the fee in both 2023 and 2025. Most recently, House Bill 25-1144, which would have done away with the fee entirely, was postponed indefinitely in committee. The bill’s fiscal analysis helps explain why. Repealing the fee would have reduced state revenue by more than $136 million in Fiscal Year 2026-27, including roughly $80 million in TABOR-exempt funds going towards six of Colorado’s transportation enterprises.
The bigger picture
Not all of those six enterprises, however, benefit Coloradans equally. For example, 0.8 cents of every Retail Delivery Fee is directed toward the Nonattainment Area Air Pollution Enterprise (NAAPME) through what it calls the “Air Pollution Mitigation Retail Delivery Fee.” While every Coloradan pays the fee, NAAPME’s own website says that it funds projects in Front Range Nonattainment areas which include traffic reduction and the “retrofitting of construction equipment, construction of roadside vegetation barriers, and planting trees along medians.” Of course, no one is exactly scrambling to move to a polluted city. But if lawmakers believe a resident of Montrose should pay the same fee as someone in the metro-area to plant trees along a Denver median, they should make their case directly to the people. This is precisely why TABOR exists.
More importantly, recent data suggest that the Retail Delivery Fee is consistent with Colorado’s increasing reliance on fee revenue as a whole. Because cash funds are generally TABOR- exempt, most fees collected by enterprises are deposited into these accounts. Their growth demonstrates just how heavily Colorado relies on fee-funded government. Adjusted for inflation, the total rate of change for cash funds was a striking 588% increase between FY 1993-1994 and FY 2024-2025. Meanwhile the General Fund, which is mostly subject to TABOR, grew just 44% during the same period of time.
Skirting voter consent
This disparity is no accident. Before approving tax refund-busting measures like Proposition NN in November, voters should ask whether the decades-long expansion of TABOR exempt revenue has already taken enough fiscal authority from the taxpayers.
The extra three cents on my DoorDash receipt is a reminder that the legislature has tested the boundaries of TABOR one new fee at a time. Most Coloradans won’t notice a fee increase from 28 to 31 cents, and they probably won’t notice the next increase either. But that is the whole point. Reasonable people can disagree about how much the state spends on transportation or pollution mitigation, but they should not be left wondering if lawmakers are raising revenue through unremarkable fees that skirt the very voter consent TABOR was designed to require.
Jackson Brody is majoring in international studies at the University of Denver, and is a graduate of the Future Leaders program at Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
