Here & Now

How Wisconsin Spends Your State Income Tax

Zac Schultz:

Every April 2 1/2 million tax returns are filed with the state’s Department of Revenue. That includes more than a million single filers to married couples all the way up to nearly 43,000 families with six or more people. We want to look at how much the median income taxpayer earns in a year. Now, median is not the average. If you put all the incomes in a row, lowest to highest, median is the one in the middle. Truly the middle class. In 2016, the median Wisconsin taxpayer earned $38,284 a year. And paid $1,104 in state income taxes. In fiscal year 2016 the state of Wisconsin spent $44 billion. But that includes federal money and borrowing and money that came from fees. If you want to look at how your income tax dollars were spent you need to look at something called general purpose revenue or GPR. In 2016, GPR was $15 billion. That came from things like the sales tax, taxes on your phone and electric bill, taxes on beer and cigarettes and the state income tax. The income tax in 2016 was $7.7 billion or 51% of GPR. Remember our taxpayer earning $38,000? They paid $1,104 of that $7.7 billion in state income tax. So where did their money go? The biggest chunk, $376, went to public schools. $195 went to Medicaid. The biggest part of that pays for Badgercare, the health insurance program for low income families and children. $183 was used to fund state government. Of that, $84 went to pay for the Department of Corrections and the prison system. $72 went to the UW system. $37 to the technical college system. And $64 went to property tax credits to help lower their property tax bill. Another $60 went to shared revenue to help fund city and county government. General Purpose Revenue also helps keep Wisconsin Public Broadcasting on the air. For the median taxpayer it’s 1 cent a year. Thank you for your support. Speaking of cents, only 8 cents went to transportation. The Department of Transportation spends nearly $3 1/2 billion a year. But most of that comes from the gas tax and registration fees which is not part of GPR and the rest is from the federal government and borrowing. Adding up what we’ve told you so far, that’s almost 90% of what General Purposes Revenue pays for. But as you can see, just a few dollars from the median taxpayer can fund a lot of programs.