There is no rule saying a zero or negative AGI precludes a TABOR refund. The CO Form 104 instructions say this:
Line 35 TABOR State Sales Tax Refund
To be eligible for this refund:
• You must be a full-year Colorado resident;
• Your return must be postmarked or transmitted by October 15, 2025;
• In general, you must be 18 or older as of January 1, 2024. If you were under 18 as of January 1,
2024, you must either have a Colorado tax liability (line 2 must be greater than 0) or be claiming a
refund of Colorado wage withholding on a W-2;
• You must not have been convicted of a felony and incarcerated in a correctional facility operated
by or under contract with the Colorado Department of Corrections or Federal Bureau of Prisons
for 180 days or more during the year; and
• A deceased person must have met all applicable requirements as of the date of their death
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Read carefully, the refund is only precluded based on zero tax due for under age 18. Also the table you mentioned does not preclude a refund for negative AGI:
| Incomes up to $53,000 | $177 |
"UP TO" does not mean "0 up to".
In principle, the TABOR refund is based on all government revenue, not just income tax, also sales tax, so it isn't limited just to people who pay income tax -- even though in recent years it's now prorated according to reported income.
As it turns out WE don't care any more, because before filing my wife's brother's return, we adjusted one rental property which is now sitting empty indefinitely (long story) from rental to personal use partway through the year, resulting (correctly) in lower allowed deductions and thus a higher (positive) AGI and autofill of a TABOR refund. But I still think TT is wrong in this case.
At a meta-level, this kind of behavior hidden in many dusty corners of TT is one of the reasons I don't strongly recommend it to other people. We use it as a trusted expert on tax law; it does something funky; we can't find much about it on the web, and most of the time can't get any explanation from the program either, like in this case, "why are you leaving the TABOR refund amount blank, but still allowing us to fill it in without an override either?"
