Wisconsin tax collection forecast drops $282 million

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Tony Evers will have about $2.4 billion in new tax collections available for when he lays out his spending priorities in his first state budget, based on a new projection released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The forecast is slightly lower — about $282 million — than a November projection by the state Department of Administration. That drop is less than 1 percentage point of the entire roughly $52 billion in projected tax collections by the middle of 2021.

Evers, a Democrat, will submit his budget to the Republican-controlled Legislature at the end of February. He has already pledged to increase funding for K-12 schools by $1.4 billion, cut middle class income taxes by $340 million by capping a GOP-backed manufacturing credit and accept federal Medicaid expansion money to save the state about $180 million a year.

Evers had no immediate comment on the new forecast.

But the Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s budget committee took credit for the news, saying their management of state government the past eight years allowed Evers to inherit “the best budget scenario in a generation.” Since 1999, only two budgets were projected to have more than $1.5 billion in new revenue and neither was as high as the one ahead of Evers.

“Wisconsin is on a roll and we are not done yet,” said Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. John Nygren, the budget committee co-chairs, in a joint statement. “Wisconsin’s finances are in great shape. No amount of spin or rhetoric can change the facts.”

The economic analysis predicts the state will see a 3.3 percent increase in tax collections in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Tax collections are slated to grow by 4.2 percent in the first year of the new budget and 2.3 percent in the second.

The current fiscal year is slated to end with a $622 million balance, which is then added to an estimated $1.8 billion in new revenue expected to be collected through the middle of 2021. Another forecast revision will be made by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau in May.