Colorado will now let buyers outside the insurance industry pick up premium tax credits that insurers leave unclaimed.
The change comes from House Bill 26-1346, signed by Gov. Jared Polis on June 1, 2026. It lets the state's Department of the Treasury sell insurance premium tax credits to entities that are not insurance companies. Until now, the buyer pool was tied to the industry. The new law widens it.
The shift matters to insurers because of how these credits work. A qualified taxpayer – the entity allowed to buy and use a credit - has long meant an insurance company authorized to do business in Colorado that owes the state premium tax. The new law keeps that, then adds a second category: a non-insurance entity, authorized to do business in Colorado, that contracts with the department to buy a credit only after it goes unsold through the application process run for insurance companies. In plain terms, insurers get first crack. What they leave on the table can then go to outside buyers.
The law also limits how those credits move once an outside buyer holds one. A credit bought by a non-insurance entity can be transferred a single time to an insurance company that is authorized to do business in Colorado and owes premium tax. That insurer cannot then hand it off again, except through a merger, acquisition, or line-of-business divestiture, or under a related transfer rule. Every transfer or assumption has to be reported to the department in writing, and the department issues a new tax credit certificate to both the transferor and the transferee. The timing for actually claiming the credit does not change.
For carrier-side finance teams, the practical takeaway is about who can hold these credits and how they travel. Insurers keep first pick. But credits that once would have sat unsold now have somewhere else to go, with a single route back to an insurer that owes premium tax. The act carries a safety clause, which means it took effect right away rather than waiting out the usual delay. For insurers tracking Colorado's premium tax credit program, it widens the market for credits they choose not to buy and sets clear rules for moving them afterward.
