Colorado Workers’ Comp Exemption
We file workers’ compensation exemptions for Colorado sole proprietors, LLC members, and corporate officers. Send us your details and we’ll confirm whether you qualify and handle the filing.
When coverage is required in Colorado
Any private employer with one or more employees (part-time, full-time, or family members) must carry workers' compensation insurance. C.R.S. § 8-40-302 defines a private 'employer' as anyone with one or more persons engaged in service under a contract of hire — there is no minimum employee count that exempts a business generally. Separately, anyone performing work on a construction site — including independent contractors and sole proprietors — must either be covered or file a rejection of coverage; this construction-site rule is broader than the general one-employee rule.
Who can be excluded in Colorado
Sole proprietors
Automatically excluded from the definition of 'employee' and not required to carry coverage on themselves. They start outside the Act and may elect to be included rather than needing to 'reject' anything. Sole proprietors/partners performing construction-site work were historically required to file a separate rejection-of-coverage form; CDLE has reportedly consolidated this into the same rejection form used by corporate officers/LLC members, but I could not confirm this consolidation on an official .gov page myself (see notes) — treat the current form mechanics as medium confidence.
Partners
Same treatment as sole proprietors — excluded from the definition of 'employee' by default and may elect to be included.
LLC members
Treated as employees by default (like corporate officers) and must be covered unless they file a written rejection of coverage under C.R.S. § 8-41-202. Must own at least 10% of the LLC's membership interest and control/supervise/manage the company's business affairs to be eligible to reject.
Corporate officers
Treated as employees by default. May reject coverage under C.R.S. § 8-41-202 if the officer (chairperson, president, VP, secretary, or treasurer) owns at least 10% of the corporation's stock and controls/supervises/manages its business affairs. Rejection is made via written notice on a Division-approved form sent by certified mail to the workers' comp insurer (or to the Division itself if there is no insurer); rejection takes effect the day after receipt and continues as long as the policy is in effect. I found no statutory cap on the total number of officers who may reject (unlike Florida's numeric caps).
Construction rules in Colorado
Anyone performing work on a construction site — including independent contractors and sole proprietors, not just corporate officers/LLC members — must either carry coverage or file a rejection of coverage. I could not independently verify, on an official .gov page, the exact current form number used for this construction-specific filing versus the general corporate-officer/LLC rejection form; see notes.
How the exemption is filed
Colorado has no state-issued 'exemption certificate' or public registry. Exclusion works as a rejection-of-coverage election: the eligible officer/LLC member (or, for construction-site work, the sole proprietor/partner) files written notice on a Division-approved form, sent by certified mail, to the workers' comp insurer, or to the Division of Workers' Compensation directly if the business is uninsured. No fee was identified in any source reviewed. Multiple secondary (non-.gov) sources describe the current form as 'WC-43, Rejection of Coverage by Corporate Officers or Members of a Limited Liability Company,' recently updated to also cover partners/sole proprietors doing construction work (replacing an older form sometimes cited as WC-45) — I was blocked (HTTP 403) from directly loading cdle.colorado.gov to confirm this form number myself, so it is included as medium-confidence background rather than a verified fact.
- Form
- WC-43, Rejection of Coverage by Corporate Officers or Members of a Limited Liability Company (form number sourced from secondary summaries only — not independently confirmed on an official page; see notes)
- Statute
- C.R.S. § 8-40-302 (scope of the term 'employer'); C.R.S. § 8-41-202 (rejection of coverage by corporate officers and others)
- Market
- Competitive — coverage is bought from a private carrier.
Notes and open questions
Every attempt to WebFetch cdle.colorado.gov (the official Division of Workers' Compensation site) returned HTTP 403 Forbidden, including the main employer/coverage pages, the independent-contractors/coverage-exemptions page, and PDF copies of the Colorado Workers' Compensation Act. The statutory text above was instead verified by directly fetching verbatim Colorado Revised Statutes mirrors (Justia, FindLaw), which reproduce official state code language. The current form number/consolidation (WC-43 vs. older WC-45) and the sole-proprietor construction-specific process came only from search-result summaries of the CDLE site and third-party insurance-agency PDFs, not a page I loaded and read myself — flagged accordingly. No numeric cap on rejecting officers was found (contrast with FL/DE/GA which have explicit caps).
Sources
- https://law.justia.com/codes/colorado/2022/title-8/article-41/part-2/section-8-41-202/
- https://codes.findlaw.com/co/title-8-labor-and-industry/co-rev-st-sect-8-41-202.html
Source material dated undated — statute text as currently codified in the Colorado Revised Statutes mirrors reviewed; accessed 2026-08-30. Compiled from official Colorado sources as a starting point, not legal advice — rules change, and your situation may turn on facts this page cannot see. Confirm with Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Division of Workers' Compensation or ask us and we’ll check it for you.
Workers' comp exemption filing in Colorado
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