What’s the difference between a tax and a fee?

Some of the most consequential fights over Colorado government finance in the coming years won’t happen at the state legislature or at the ballot box, but in a courtroom, where fiscal conservatives and business groups are contesting government fees of as little as 20 cents.

In Aspen, a taxpayer advocacy group is fighting a 20-cent surcharge on grocery bags in a lawsuit that’s now gone all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court. At the state government level, a small business coalition is arguing that the secretary of state’s office for decades has been illegally using business filing fees to finance a slew of unrelated government services.

And — perhaps most significantly — the TABOR Foundation is challenging the constitutionality of a $264 million hospital fee that generates another $264 million in matching funds from the federal government to pay for uncompensated care. At issue in each of these cases is a seemingly simple question: What’s the difference between a tax and a fee? But no matter how small some of the contested fees are, the answer could have wide-ranging consequences for taxpayers and virtually every level of Colorado government.

The tax-vs.-fee debate is not unique to Colorado, but the ramifications here are amplified by the state’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which requires voter approval to raise taxes.

After the landmark constitutional measure was passed in 1992, lawmakers have increasingly turned to fees to fund government services ranging from higher education to bridge repairs to hospitals. The simplest explanation: Fees don’t require voter approval.

Read more at The Denver Post