Fiscal Facts

Wisconsin’s nonpartisan spring elections tend to be low turnout affairs. About one-fourth as many eligible voters make it to spring polls as in the fall.

Property taxes in Wisconsin’s 10 largest cities show how changes are not uniform across the state. The average statewide property tax rate fell 0.6 percent. 

Wisconsin’s relatively high residential property taxes are driven by a variety of factors, including the state’s constitutional “uniformity clause,” which requires all properties to be taxed at the same rate.

Despite many shifts in Wisconsin’s property tax since 1946, the state’s rank among the states remained consistently in the top 20.

This spring, Wisconsin voters will elect a new state Supreme Court justice to the first vacant seat in more than a decade.

At nearly $11 billion, the property tax is not only the largest state-local tax but also second-largest for many Wisconsin taxpayers after the federal income tax. 

One of the largest declines in Wisconsin state tax collections has gone largely unnoticed. UI tax collections declined 18.6% in 2017 to $751.3 million.

The sales tax is Wisconsin state government’s second-largest tax. Sales tax collections rose 3.1% in 2017.

State taxes and fees in Wisconsin totaled $18.8 billion in 2017, a 1.7 percent increase over 2016. 

The state-local tax burden relative to personal income has declined steadily in recent years, from a high of 11.9% in 2011 to 10.7% in 2017. This figure excludes federal taxes.