I sent copies of the following to the Colorado Secretary of State, the Colorado Senator who is Chairman of the Business, Labor and Technology Committee, and the Editor of the Denver Post.

The State for Colorado may be improperly imposing hidden business fees, supporting discriminatory computer contracts and risking the privacy and security of business financial information. How? Every year, businesses must file an Annual Report. Filing electronically is only $10 – unless you try to file a report using widely available alternatives to Microsoft technology. When you file using one of these alternatives you are never given any indication during the filing that you are not using “recommended” technology. Your credit card information is taken but you may never receive confirmation that your transaction has completed or you might be given some vague message that “the server is not responding.”

What you will subsequently receive is a printed notice of “Delinquency to File” – with the fee now raised to $50.

In this day and age this is wholly unacceptable. There are numerous commercial transactions conducted every second on the Internet where this sort of thing doesn’t happen. At the least it is far below acceptable best practices of software development for online commercial transactions. At the worst it raises serious concerns over the privacy and security of financial information provided by businesses around the state to the state.
I urge you to investigate this matter and take appropriate action.