Is Wisconsin’s income tax on the middle class higher than the top individual income tax rate in half the states in the nation?

Wisconsin's tax rate is 5.3% for individual taxpayers in the middle tax bracket — higher than the rate in the top tax bracket in 25 states as of January 2023, according to the Tax Foundation.  

Seven states levy no income tax, while some others tax only capital gains, interest and dividends, the foundation said. The rest have top rates between 2.5% and 5%. California has the highest top tax bracket at 13.3%; Wisconsin's is 7.65%. 

Wisconsin state government depends more on income taxes than the majority of states to fund public services, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

However, in the past several years, state officials have made tax changes — mostly in the form of cuts — resulting in tax collections between 2011 and 2023 that were $13.09 billion lower than they otherwise would have been. 

Between 1980 and 2020, average tax rates in Wisconsin fell for most brackets of taxpayers except for the bottom 20%, the Policy Forum found.