Stationed at Fort Carson but a resident elsewhere? You may skip Colorado's ownership tax

Five military installations sit inside El Paso County, among them Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, and the Air Force Academy, so plenty of people here are stationed in Colorado while their legal home stays in another state. For your car, that gap is money.

Part of the yearly cost of registering a vehicle in Colorado is the Specific Ownership Tax. An active-duty service member whose legal home is elsewhere may not owe it at all. The exemption rests on Colorado law and the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which keeps the military from being the reason you get taxed as a resident of a place orders sent you to.

There are two clean paths. Keep your home-state registration for the whole tour, or register the vehicle in Colorado and claim the exemption with the state affidavit, form DR 2667.

Claiming it usually means bringing your military ID, a copy of your orders, and a recent Leave and Earnings Statement showing a tax-withholding state other than Colorado. You file the affidavit at the county Motor Vehicle Office, renew it each year at registration time, and submit one form per vehicle.

Sort this before a PCS move rather than after, when receipts and renewals are harder to chase. The exact proof and the rules shift now and then, so the Colorado DMV’s military page and the Department of Revenue’s active-duty guidance are the pages to confirm against before you walk into the counter.