Wisconsin's Tax Burden Reached a Record Low in 2023

Monday, March 2nd, 2026 -- 1:00 PM

(Wisconsin Public Radio) The state and local tax burden in Wisconsin reached a record low in the 2023 fiscal year, but a decades-long trend of declining tax burden may soon be coming to an end.

According to the Wisconsin Public Radio, that’s according to a new report the Wisconsin Policy Forum released Thursday. It looked at the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau from July 2022 to June 2023, helping to put the state’s burden in a national context.

In fiscal year 2023, Wisconsin had the 34th highest tax burden of all 50 states, slightly higher than the previous year when it ranked 35th, the report noted. The report found state and local taxes declined to 9.77 percent of personal income in Wisconsin during that period, just below the 9.83 percent of income they accounted for in the 2022 fiscal year.

Wisconsin’s taxes as a share of income were also roughly one percentage point below the national average of 10.7 percent, according to the report. “As our tax burden has declined, so too has our rank among the states throughout the 21st Century,” said Mark Sommerhauser, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Wisconsin regularly ranked among the top-five highest tax burden states in the country, the report notes. The state had the third-highest tax burden in 2000 at 12.5 percent, behind only New York state and Maine.

But from 2000 to 2023, the state’s tax burden experienced “the largest decline in the nation,” the report notes. “There are not many states that are even approaching as big of a decline in the tax burden as Wisconsin,” Sommerhauser said. “There are only a handful of states that are even in the ballpark of the size of the decline that we’ve seen in the 21st Century.”

But the decline “has translated into a decrease in overall state and local spending levels,” most notably in K-12 education, the report notes. Wisconsin dropped from 11th in per-pupil spending in 2002 to 26th by 2023, according to the report.

Sommerhauser said education is the single largest area of state and local spending, but it isn’t the only area where the amount of income residents are paying toward has fallen.

“For instance, in the area of public safety, our state’s police spending as a share of income has declined significantly over time,” he said. “You can see this in a number of areas. Education is probably the most notable, but it’s definitely not the only area.”

After years of the state and local tax burden trending downward, it hardly changed from 2024 to 2025. Separate research from the Wisconsin Policy Forum shows the 2024 and 2025 tax burdens were roughly the same at around 9.6 percent.

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