By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun
A 21.7% dip in folks filing to start a business in Colorado during the second quarter was largely attributed to the end of a program more than a year ago that reduced filing fees to $1, according to the latest quarterly data from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.
“It was the sharpest decrease year-over-year in the state (that) we’ve been tracking since 2005. That’s both in percentage terms and absolute numbers,” said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of University of Colorado’s Business Research Division, which analyzed the data for the Secretary of State’s Office.
New business filings reached a second-quarter high last year at 54,940. The fee returned to $50 in June 2023 and now, one year later, filings dropped to 43,029 for the quarter. That’s still above prior years, including years before the pandemic.