February 9, 2026
The Colorado retail delivery fee: do you owe it?
A small per-delivery fee that quietly applies to a huge number of Colorado businesses — and a small-business waiver many qualify for. Here is the plain-English version.
Colorado has a tax that almost nobody saw coming and many businesses still do not collect correctly: the retail delivery fee. It is small per transaction, which is exactly why it is easy to ignore — and exactly why it adds up to a compliance problem over thousands of deliveries. Here is what it is and whether it applies to you.
What the fee is
The retail delivery fee is a flat fee charged on each retail delivery of taxable goods made by motor vehicle to a Colorado address. The amount is small — well under a dollar per delivery — and it adjusts for inflation each year, so the exact figure changes. It applies per delivery, not per item, and the retailer is responsible for collecting and remitting it.
Who it applies to
If you sell taxable goods and deliver them to Colorado customers — by your own vehicle, a third-party courier, or a shipping carrier — the fee generally applies. That sweeps in a lot of businesses that never thought of themselves as “delivery” companies: a shop that ships orders, a restaurant that delivers, an e-commerce seller fulfilling to Colorado addresses. If you only sell services, or only sell items that are not subject to sales tax, it generally does not apply.
The small-business waiver
Here is the part worth knowing: Colorado created a waiver so that smaller and newer businesses are not buried by this. Businesses under a certain annual retail-sales threshold (and new businesses) can qualify to be exempt from collecting the fee. If your sales are modest, you may not have to deal with it at all — but you need to confirm you actually qualify rather than assume it.
The retail delivery fee is the definition of a small thing that becomes a big thing at volume. A few cents you forgot to collect, multiplied by every delivery for a year, is a back-tax bill — so the time to get it right is before it accrues.
Getting it right
If the fee applies and you do not qualify for the waiver, it needs to be set up in your point-of-sale or checkout so it is collected on every qualifying delivery, then remitted to the state on your sales-tax schedule. Most modern systems can handle it once it is configured; the failure mode is simply never turning it on.
The bottom line
If you deliver or ship taxable goods to Colorado customers, the retail delivery fee probably applies unless you qualify for the small-business waiver. It is small per order and meaningful in aggregate, so it is worth a few minutes to confirm where you stand. If you are not sure whether you owe it or qualify for the waiver, that is a quick thing for us to check.
This is general information for Colorado businesses, not specific tax advice, and the fee amount and waiver thresholds change. Confirm the current rules with the Colorado Department of Revenue or a CPA.