Colorado's SUTS portal files your returns. This handles everything it doesn't.
Per-city license calendars and renewal alerts, taxability difference notes, and change monitoring across Colorado's 65 self-collecting home-rule cities. Built for Colorado bookkeepers, CPAs, and businesses that operate in more than one city.
Become a founding member See what SUTS leaves outFirst, what SUTS already does
Colorado's free state SUTS portal is good, and you should use it. It lets you file and remit one return covering nearly all home-rule cities at no cost (state jurisdiction list). We will never charge you for something the state gives away. Home Rule Helper covers only the layer SUTS does not: licenses, renewals, taxability differences, audits, and change tracking. A few self-collecting cities, Delta and Telluride among them, do not appear on the state's SUTS list (checked October 2026), so sellers there still deal with the city directly. Also worth knowing: 2024's HB24-1041 simplified life for out-of-state remote sellers only (bill text). If your business or your clients are physically in Colorado and sell into multiple cities, that law did not change your obligations.
The part nobody automated
65 Colorado home-rule cities collect their own sales tax separately from the state, per the January 2026 edition of the state's rate publication (DOR publication DR 1002). Filing returns is largely solved. Three things are not:
Every city licenses you separately
SUTS files your return, but each home-rule city still requires its own sales tax license, with fees that range from nothing to about $200 per city and their own renewal schedules (TaxOps). Lakewood, for example, charges $20 for a two-year license and adds a $30 late charge if you apply less than 30 days before you open (City of Lakewood). Denver now charges no fee at all, but its license still renews every two years (Denver Business Tax FAQ). The fee is rarely the problem. The dates are. Ten clients times seven cities is seventy renewal dates living in somebody's head.
Every city audits you separately
The state's own SUTS FAQ says "there is no change to the audit processes for self-collecting jurisdictions" (DOR SUTS FAQ). Each city can examine your records on its own schedule, with its own rules on what is taxable.
The big tools skip this layer
TaxJar states plainly that it does not AutoFile returns for Colorado's home-rule cities (TaxJar support article). Human help exists, but it is priced per filing, $75 per return at Numeral (pricing), or by monthly retainer. There is nothing priced for a solo bookkeeper's small clients.
What you get
- A per-city license calendar for every client. Which cities each client is licensed in, what each license costs, and when each one renews. Email alerts before every deadline, plus a calendar feed you can subscribe to.
- Taxability difference notes. Where cities diverge from the state and each other on things like services, software, and delivery, in plain language with a link to the city source on every entry.
- Change monitoring across the 65 self-collecting cities, plus recently converted ones. We watch the city websites, DR 1002, and the SUTS participation list, and send you a monthly digest of what actually changed. Every data point shows its source link and a last-verified date. Anything we cannot re-verify within 45 days gets flagged as stale instead of silently repeated.
- Registration walkthroughs and a contractor use tax matrix as one-time add-ons, so you buy only what you need.
What this is not: a filing service, or tax advice. We never touch your returns, your remittances, or your client credentials, and we never will. SUTS already files well and free. Questions about a specific client's situation go to the city, and we will point you to the right contact.
Founding member pricing
Two plans. Preorder now, pay nothing today. Your card is never charged before the product launches, and you can cancel anytime before then and pay nothing at all.
- Unlimited clients on one subscription
- License calendars and renewal alerts for every client
- Taxability difference notes for all covered cities
- Monthly change digest with sources and verified dates
- Cancel anytime
- One business, all its cities
- License calendar and renewal alerts
- Taxability difference notes
- Monthly change digest
- Cancel anytime
Plain answers
Is this a filing service?
No. SUTS files home-rule returns free and we tell you to use it. We handle the licensing, taxability, audit prep, and change tracking layer that survives SUTS. We never hold client credentials.
How do I know the data is right?
Every figure links to the city source it came from and shows the date we last verified it. If a city page changes and we cannot re-verify a data point within 45 days, we mark it stale rather than let you rely on it. If a wrong alert from us ever costs you money, we refund your subscription for the year, no argument.
Doesn't the free state GIS database already give me rates?
Yes, and use it. The state's GIS lookup answers rates and jurisdiction boundaries well. It does not tell you when your Lakewood license renews, what a given city taxes differently than the state, or that a city just changed its fee schedule. That is the part we maintain.
Do you use AI to build this?
Yes. Home Rule Helper is researched and maintained with AI agents that Troy directs and reviews. That does not lower the bar: every figure still links to its primary source with a last-verified date, and a person spot-checks the monthly digest against the city pages.
What if the state eventually centralizes licensing too?
Then this product becomes unnecessary and we will say so. Our own change monitoring would spot that early, and we would tell subscribers plainly instead of milking the tail.