VICTOR MARX: INITIATIVE 195 PUNISHES SUCCESS AND PUTS COLORADO JOBS AT RISK

Republican nominee says Weiser is aligned with his party’s socialist wing

and challenges him to support lower rates for every Coloradan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 2, 2026

(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — Republican nominee for Governor Victor Marx today warned that Initiative 195 would make Colorado a less competitive place to build a business, invest capital and create jobs.

“Colorado should be synonymous with opportunity and success, not with punishing both,” Marx said. “Initiative 195 sends exactly the wrong message to every entrepreneur, employer and investor deciding where to put the next job or the next dollar. Nearly doubling the top income-tax rate will not make Colorado more prosperous. It will make other states more attractive.”

Marx said Weiser’s support for the radical “rich tax” concept is another example of his alignment with what Marx calls the Democratic Socialist Party: the far-left wing of a Colorado Democratic Party whose chairman has now publicly supported Initiative 195.

Marx said taxpayers should be deeply disturbed that Attorney General Phil Weiser has offered full-throated support for a progressive “rich tax” and said Colorado must “put in real work to change TABOR.” Weiser declined to endorse Initiative 195 before certification, saying, “I don’t take positions until something is actually certified.”

The measure is now certified, its radical backers have fully embraced it, and Weiser owes voters an answer.

“The waiting is over, and Phil Weiser owes Coloradans a straight answer,” Marx said. “I challenge him to join me in rejecting Initiative 195 and supporting a fair plan that lowers the income-tax rate across the board, protects TABOR and attracts jobs, investment and growth. Colorado does not need a better way to divide success. We need a better way to create it.”

Initiative 195 would replace Colorado’s 4.4% flat income tax with six graduated brackets beginning in 2027, reaching 8.4% on income above $1 million. The rates apply to individuals, estates, trusts and corporations. The measure also strikes TABOR’s constitutional uniform-income-tax-rate protection and lets the state retain the new revenue.

The official fiscal analysis estimates nearly $2 billion in added annual collections in the first full fiscal year and says total after-tax household and business income would decline.

The downside extends far beyond a handful of wealthy taxpayers:

• Businesses are in the crosshairs. The same graduated schedule applies to C corporations and combined groups doing business in Colorado.

• Colorado loses an advantage. The proposed 8.4% top rate would exceed the top individual rate in every neighboring state.

• Jobs and capital can leave. Common Sense Institute models a net annual loss of 14 firms and nearly $200 million in corporate profits, while acknowledging limited business-migration data.

• TABOR is weakened. Taxpayers would lose the constitutional guarantee of one uniform income-tax rate, and the added revenue would sit outside TABOR’s limit as a voter-approved revenue change.

• The spending plan is broad. Lawmakers would appropriate the money among wide-ranging education, health care and early-childhood purposes.

Learn more at Victor2026.com.