Colorado § 10-14-504 - Taxation.

§ 10-14-504. Taxation.

Every society organized or licensed under this article is hereby declared to be a charitable and benevolent institution, and all of its funds shall be exempt from all and every state, county, district, municipal, and school tax other than taxes on real estate and office equipment.

Source: L. 93: Entire article amended with relocations, p. 603, § 1, effective July 1.

Editor's note: This section is similar to former § 10-14-133 as it existed prior to 1993.

ANNOTATION

Annotator's note. Since § 10-14-504 is similar to § 10-14-133 as it existed prior to the 1993 amendment to article 14 which resulted in the relocation of provisions, a relevant case construing that provision has been included in the annotations to this section.

Corporation must have all the indicia of a fraternal society to avoid premium tax. The general assembly imposes a tax upon gross premium income of insurance companies. Fraternal and benevolent corporations defined as those which have a lodge system with a ritualistic form of work and representative form of government are exempted. It has clearly defined what is meant by "lodge system" and "representative government". Since the reorganization, Homesteaders has not had a lodge system; it has not had a representative form of government; nor has it performed any ritualistic work. These are requirements essential to a status that would exempt it from the tax under discussion. Beery v. Homesteaders Life Co., 146 Colo. 218, 361 P.2d 127 (1961).

Fraternal benevolent societies are not exempt from sales taxes that were not contemplated in 1911 when they were declared to be "charitable and benevolent institution[s]" when such sales tax was first adopted in 1935 and the legislature imposed the tax on "all sales and purchases of tangible personal property at retail". This is particularly true if the legislation that created the tax listed specific exemptions that did not include fraternal benevolent societies. Colo. Dept. of Rev. v. Woodmen of the World, 919 P.2d 806 (Colo. 1996).

The reintroduction of the words "and every" to a phrase making it read "all and every state tax" does not strengthen and reaffirm the broad scope of the exemption for fraternal benefit societies, it merely was replaced after being determined by the revisor of statutes to be redundant. The meaning of the phrase remains unchanged. Colo. Dept. of Rev. v. Woodmen of the World, 919 P.2d 806 (Colo. 1996).