Starting Nov. 22, Westminster shoppers will no longer pay the city's 4.25% sales tax on diapers, infant formula, or feminine hygiene products, a change the Westminster City Council approved after years of pressure from constituents and small businesses over the rising cost of raising a family. City officials estimate the exemption will save residents somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000 per year.
The council passed the measure, Councillor's Bill No. 34, on second reading on August 24, formally amending Chapter 2, Title IV of the Westminster Municipal Code, according to the City of Westminster. As reported by Denver7, Councilmember Obi Ezeadi said the city paid for the exemption using savings from several capital improvement projects that came in under budget, and that the initiative was years in the making after concerns about affordability from constituents and small businesses.
A Statewide Patchwork of Local Exemptions
Colorado exempted diapers, incontinence products, and period products from the state-level sales tax back in 2023, but that change never automatically applied to cities like Westminster. Because Colorado is a home-rule state, cities collect their own local sales taxes independently, meaning state lawmakers left local adoption entirely optional for self-collecting home-rule municipalities, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
That gap left most residents still paying local tax on essential hygiene items long after the state exemption took effect. A year after the 2023 change, reporting from the Colorado Sun found that the majority of Coloradans were still paying municipal sales taxes on those products because most home-rule cities simply hadn't passed their own local exemptions. Westminster now joins Denver, Aurora, Boulder, Englewood, and Lafayette among the relatively small group of Colorado cities that have voluntarily waived the local tax on these items, per Denver7's reporting.
Why the Cost of Diapers Adds Up Fast
The dollars at stake are not small for individual households. Estimates from the Women's Foundation of Colorado, cited by the Denver Gazette, put average family spending at $75 per child monthly on diapers and $15 per person monthly on period products. Those costs are also largely unavoidable through existing safety nets, since neither SNAP nor WIC federal assistance benefits can legally be used to purchase diapers or period products, leaving low-income families dependent on cash assistance or local diaper banks, according to Mile High Mamas.
That gap helps explain why diaper insecurity remains widespread across the state. Regional diaper bank WeeCycle estimated in 2024 that nearly 47% of Colorado families with infants and toddlers experience diaper need, while existing diaper banks meet only about 10% of the statewide demand of roughly 100 million diapers annually, per the same nonprofit's estimates reported by Mile High Mamas.
Part of a Broader Push on Childcare Costs
The sales tax exemption is one piece of a larger, coordinated effort in Westminster to ease household costs for families with young children. Denver7 reports that the city is also working to reduce childcare providers' costs through a property tax rebate program, and separately changed its zoning rules to make it easier to open daycares. Childcare affordability is listed as a priority in the city's strategic plan, per Denver7's reporting.
That childcare push has real teeth behind it. In July, the council advanced a companion initiative to rebate 100% of the city's 3.65 mill property tax levy for licensed childcare providers, an estimated $2,260 annual rebate for commercial centers and $110 for home-based providers, making Westminster the first municipality in Colorado to enact a full property tax rebate of that kind for childcare operators.
The need is significant: city data from 2026 shows Westminster has only 81 licensed childcare providers serving roughly 6,900 children, leaving a shortage of thousands of infant and toddler care slots. Childcare expenses currently eat up about 13% of household income for the average Westminster family and as much as 23% for low-income families, well above the federal recommendation of staying under 7%. In October 2025, the council had already voted unanimously to amend the city's comprehensive plan to permit childcare facilities in nearly every land-use zoning category except industrial, a change aimed at expanding where daycares can open across the city's commercial corridors.
