Receipt requirements · CO
Colorado receipt requirements
What a business issuing its own receipts in Colorado needs to show: the rate, whether tax has to be stated separately, which categories are exempt, and whether a written rent receipt is required.
Rates verified: 2026-08-05. Rates change — check your state Department of Revenue before relying on a figure for filing.
Sales tax at a glance
- State rate
- 2.9%
- Combined with local
- 2.9% – 11.2% combined
- Sourcing
- Destination-based — tax follows the buyer's address
Does tax have to be separately stated?
Colorado expects the tax shown separately from the price. Where a home-rule city administers its own tax, that city's ordinance governs the presentation, and several require their tax broken out from the state's.
Whatever the rule, print it as its own line. Separately stating tax is what lets a reviewer isolate the pre-tax cost, and it is the mechanism most state statutes use to let a seller exclude the tax from gross receipts. The display conventions are covered here.
Exempt and specially rated categories
- Groceries for home consumption exempt at the state level
- Prescription drugs exempt
- Prescribed medical devices exempt
- Some home-rule cities tax groceries the state exempts
A basket that mixes an exempt item with a taxable one needs a per-line tax flag and separate taxable and non-taxable subtotals, or the tax line cannot be checked against the lines it came from.
Rent receipts in Colorado
No statute requires a written rent receipt; a tenant may still request one and most landlords issue one.
The two fields landlords most often omit are the period the payment covers and the unit number. The full field list is here, and the statutory format is in the rent receipt spec.
Worth knowing in Colorado
Colorado is the hardest state in the country to print a correct receipt in: dozens of home-rule municipalities assess, collect and audit their own sales taxes independently of the state, with their own exemption lists. A grocery item exempt statewide can still be taxable inside a home-rule city.