You may or may not have heard that some states no longer have income tax, but did you know Wisconsin is actually trying to get rid of personal property tax? They’ve been trying to do it for years. So what’s the deal?
Here’s Five Fast Facts about Wisconsin Personal Property Tax:
- 🐄 Old School - Our state’s personal property tax was territorial and established in 18-freaking-30 before we were even a state! It started as a tax on things like livestock, furniture, and even jewelry. It’s older and weirder than Keith Richards.
- 💰 Double Billed - The latest attempt has been put together with help from the Department of Revenue (DOR), and the driving argument is that businesses should not have to pay personal property tax for something they bought (and paid sales tax on) for their business.
- 🗳️ All Together Now - Both parties along with businesses and trade groups want to get rid of it, but other high-profile issues got in the way.
- 📠 WTF? - Over the years, random exemptions have been made for everything from bizarre inclusions like clothing, personal libraries, and fax machines to understandable things like hay, feed, and farm machinery. Seriously, fax machines?
- ✂️ Redistributed - The overriding issue with the proposal is the need for an assurance that local governments will get state money to make up for lost tax revenue, which is somewhere between $200 - $300M. Lawmakers promise to figure that out.
🔥Bottom line: Less taxes are good. But if you trust lawmakers to freely give up $300M, you’re out of your mind. If eliminating the tax is really a goal and not a talking point, they should stop the partisan fighting and get something passed.
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