Boulder County businesses seek property tax flexibility
Another group of business leaders has petitioned Colorado’s governor and legislature to provide property tax flexibility as businesses struggle to pay their bills during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Longmont and Boulder chambers of commerce and downtown business associations from both communities jointly wrote to Gov. Jared Polis, leaders of the Colorado House and Senate and to other representatives asking for help. Their plea joins a previous effort signed by more than 100 business leaders across Colorado asking to have interest on unpaid property taxes waived or deferred so that businesses can use cash that would otherwise be used to pay property taxes for operations today.
“Many organizations are grappling with acute cash flow pressures, and pending property tax payments are a significant concern,” executive leaders of the chambers and downtown groups wrote in their letter. “We recognize the critical role property taxes play in supporting our schools and other special districts. We therefore encourage the state to partner with county treasurers to increase flexibility that could provide relief to businesses.”
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Their letter suggested several things:
- Extension of the governor’s executive order to suspend or waive interest fees on unpaid property taxes. The previous suspension was good for 30 days but expired April 30.
- Raising the dollar limit of amounts eligible for penalty. Current law permits treasurers to refrain from collecting penalties when the amount due is $50 or less. Raising that threshold would provide relief to businesses with cash flow issues.
- Consideration of using federal COVID relief funding to buy tax liens, instead of making them available to private buyers. “This would allow county treasurers to continue their work with delinquent taxpayers as well as remove the burden of added interest,” they said.
- Permit county treasurers to make short-term loans to other local governments, similar to what they are able to do with school districts, to give local governments options in the face of potentially lower tax collections.
- Lower interest rates on delinquent property taxes from 12% to1%.
Some changes would require legislative action. The Colorado Legislature suspended operations on March 14. Its normal 120-day session would end May 6 but because of the circumstances will be permitted to reconvene and complete the session. Legislative leadership set May 18 as the tentative date for the legislature to reconvene. Issues related to the pandemic will be on the agenda, along with passage of a budget for the state.
Approximately 4.47 million Americans overall made initial claims in the week ending April 18, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s figures Thursday morning, a drop of 810,000 million from the week prior. More than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past five weeks.
