This November, Colorado voters might decide whether to turn back the clock to a complicated, burdensome and antiquated tax system — one thrown out nearly 40 years ago — or to reaffirm the flat-tax rate that has promoted prosperity in our state for decades.

Making the choice even easier: The proposed throwback, Initiative 195 — is actually a multibillion-dollar-a-year tax hike.

Fortunately, the initiative might face a timely countermeasure, Initiative 232, which would stop the massive tax hike by keeping the flat tax in place.

If both measures gather enough signatures to qualify for the fall ballot — and both win voter approval — the highest vote-getter would become law.

In 1987, the legislature adopted a flat income tax, eliminating the graduated tax system and establishing a 5% across-the-board rate.

It was an eminently fair proposition: Everyone pays the same proportion of household income. At the current 4.4% rate, $75,000 in adjusted gross income pays $3,300, and $250,000 pays $11,000.

The more you earn, the more you pay. It’s simple, straightforward and genuinely fair.

In 1992, voters enshrined the flat tax with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which also requires a vote of the people to approve tax increases and caps state spending.

Initiative 195 would undo those protections by regressing to the graduated tax structure of old. Like the federal income tax, it would impose a maze of tax brackets ranging from 3.7% for the first $25,000 to 8.4% — nearly doubling the top rate.

But the bottom line for its backers is the windfall it would reap for the state government. Meaning, it amounts to a tax hike on all of Colorado even if lower tax brackets get a slight break. 

A nonpartisan legislative analysis estimates the measure would siphon off another $2 billion to $2.7 billion a year of Coloradans’ tax dollars and funnel it into state coffers. More play money for lawmakers to create more programs, in other words.

Every dollar collected above what today’s 4.4% rate would generate would be automatically exempt from the TABOR cap. So, taxpayers can pretty much say bye to those coveted TABOR refunds.

The additional revenue purportedly would be earmarked for K-12 education — at a time when enrollment is declining — as well as health care and early child care. But what that really means is tax revenue spent on those budget lines would be freed up to be frittered away on the legislature’s other grand designs. All money is fungible, after all.

Individuals and businesses — i.e., Colorado’s job creators — that fall within the proposal’s higher tax brackets are unlikely to sit still for it. Individual taxpayers who would take a hit would eye states with no income tax, like Texas and Florida. Businesses already hard pressed by Colorado’s increasingly stifling regulatory climate would consider a move, too. And those that had pondered setting up shop in the Centennial State would have second thoughts.

“We’re going to chase revenue out of the state,” Advance Colorado’s Michael Fields told The Gazette. “If you go and double taxes for businesses or individuals that are higher income earners, they’re going to leave the state and go somewhere else …”

That’s why Advance Colorado is collecting signatures for Initiative 232. It would cap the state’s rate at 4.4%. Rates could still be reduced, just not raised.

The Independence Institute’s Jake Fogleman, another critic of returning to a graduated tax, points out a flat tax makes tax filings “simpler and more predictable.”

Don’t just take their word for it, though. Consider the view of Colorado’s most prominent progressive Democrat — Gov. Jared Polis — who told a public forum last month that a graduated tax would be “absolutely devastating” for Colorado’s economy. 

Both sides of the political divide see Initiative 195 for the train wreck it is. If it makes it onto the ballot, voters ought to derail it for good. And if 232 makes the ballot, voters would be wise to support it — just to make sure the likes of the graduated tax remain on the ash heap of history.