Wisconsin sales tax calculator

Know exactly what to charge at any Wisconsin address. Find the combined rate, the tax on any amount, and the total. Free for your business, no sign-up.

Done checking rates one sale at a time? QuickBooks applies the right Wisconsin rate, state and local included, on every invoice automatically. See how automated sales tax works

Wisconsin's rate math starts with two layers. The state rate is 5%. Most of the state's 72 counties add a 0.5% county sales tax on top. The Wisconsin Department of Revenue collects both on one return.

More than half of aspiring business owners (52%) say they lack confidence managing cash flow, invoicing, and taxes, according to Intuit QuickBooks entrepreneurship research. The system a Wisconsin seller works in has three parts. You need a registration with the Department of Revenue. You charge a combined rate that depends on where the customer receives what they bought. And you file one return that carries the county tax with the state tax.

Milwaukee is the exception to watch. Since January 1, 2024, Milwaukee County's tax is 0.9% rather than 0.5%. The City of Milwaukee adds its own 2% city tax. So a sale inside the city carries 7.9%, while the rest of the county is at 5.9%. Whether you run a boutique in Madison, repair cars in Green Bay, or mow lawns in Eau Claire, here's how Wisconsin's rate works. You'll also see which of your sales it reaches and what to know at filing time.

Wisconsin's state sales tax rate is 5%. Most of the state's 72 counties add a 0.5% county sales tax, for a combined 5.5%. Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee add more. The layers:

• Wisconsin state sales tax — 5.00%. Wisconsin Legislature (Wis. Stat. § 77.52(1)–(2)).
• County sales tax — 0.50% (0.90% in Milwaukee County). Each county, by ordinance (Wis. Stat. § 77.70(1)); Milwaukee County's additional 0.4% under § 77.70(2); all administered by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
• City of Milwaukee sales tax — 2.00%. The City of Milwaukee, by ordinance (Wis. Stat. § 77.701(1)); administered by the Department of Revenue.

Where no county tax applies, the rate is the 5% state rate alone. Inside the City of Milwaukee the combined rate is 7.9%. Elsewhere in Milwaukee County it is 5.9%. A few premier resort area taxes also exist. There is no separate county registration. A seller files one return with the Department of Revenue, and county and city tax are reported on it with the state tax.

In most of Wisconsin the combined rate is 5.5%: the 5% state rate plus the 0.5% county tax. Milwaukee changed that on January 1, 2024. Milwaukee County now imposes a 0.9% county tax instead of 0.5%. The City of Milwaukee adds its own 2% city sales tax. So the combined rate is 7.9% inside the city and 5.9% elsewhere in Milwaukee County. Two things follow from how the city tax is imposed:

The city tax follows the city line, not the ZIP code. The 2% applies to taxable sales to locations in the City of Milwaukee. The Department of Revenue says a five-digit ZIP code without a street address is not enough to tell whether a sale takes place in the city. The reason: five-digit ZIP codes often cover areas both inside and outside it. The Department's example is 53209, which covers the cities of Glendale, Brown Deer, and Milwaukee. Use a street address or a nine-digit ZIP code. Check the Department's address-level rate lookup when a sale lands near the boundary.

Sellers outside Milwaukee collect it too. Every seller registered to collect Wisconsin sales tax collects the Milwaukee County tax on taxable sales to locations in Milwaukee County. That seller also collects the city tax on taxable sales to locations in the City of Milwaukee. Both duties apply regardless of where the seller is located. Both taxes are reported on the Wisconsin sales and use tax return, not on a separate local return.

On a $200 taxable sale, that is $15.80 of tax inside the city and $11.80 in the rest of the county.

Wisconsin is a destination-sourced state. Under Wis. Stat. § 77.522, a sale is sourced to the place where your customer receives what they bought. For goods, that is where they take possession. For services, it is generally where they first use the service. If the customer receives the product at your business location, the sale is sourced there. Otherwise it is sourced to the location where the customer receives it, including the delivery address in the instructions you were given. County and city taxes follow the same rule. Any seller registered to collect Wisconsin sales tax collects them for every county and city that imposes one, wherever the seller is located. Find your situation:

If you sell goods in person at your location: the sale is sourced to your business location, because the customer receives the goods there. Charge that location's combined rate: 5% plus your county's tax. Add the 2% city tax if your location is inside the City of Milwaukee.

If you ship or deliver goods to Wisconsin customers: the sale is sourced to the location where the customer receives the goods, including the delivery address in the instructions you were given. A shipping company taking possession on the customer's behalf does not count as the customer receiving the goods. So the rate is the delivery address's combined rate, not your shipping point's. The Department of Revenue says it directly. A registered retailer collects county and city tax when it sends taxable items to an address in a county or city that imposes the tax. That holds whether it ships them by a third-party shipper or delivers them with its own vehicle.

If you repair, alter, clean, or otherwise work on a customer's property: vehicle repair, appliance repair, garment alteration, dry cleaning, and the other taxable services performed on tangible goods are generally received where the customer first uses the result. For this kind of work, that means wherever they get the item back. If they pick it up at your shop, that is your shop's rate. If you deliver or ship it back to them, that is their address's rate. The Department's own illustration runs in the other direction. A Wisconsin resident sends a watch to another state for repair, and the shop ships it back. The resident made first use of the repair service in Wisconsin.

If you perform a service at the customer's location: landscaping and lawn maintenance, and repair or cleaning done on site, are generally first used where they are performed. So the sale is sourced to the customer's address. Charge that address's combined rate.

If you sell through a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy: marketplace facilitators have been required to collect Wisconsin tax on the sales they facilitate since January 1, 2020. Sales through a collecting marketplace are not yours to collect on. But they do count toward the nexus threshold below. A Wisconsin seller still registers and collects on its own direct sales: your own website checkout, invoices, and in-person sales.

If you're out of state selling into Wisconsin: Wisconsin's economic nexus threshold is $100,000 in gross sales into the state in the previous or current calendar year. There is no transaction-count test. Wisconsin removed its 200-transaction threshold effective February 20, 2021, so only dollars matter. Sales a marketplace provider makes on your behalf count toward the $100,000, even though the provider collects the tax on them. Once you cross it, you collect only on your sales outside a collecting marketplace. If every Wisconsin sale you make goes through a collecting marketplace provider, you don't need to register. Once you cross the threshold, you register and collect beginning with your next transaction. Until your sales cross it, the economic nexus rule doesn't require you to collect Wisconsin tax. Once they have, the same sourcing rules apply to you. Each shipment is sourced to its Wisconsin delivery address. You collect the 5% state rate plus that address's county tax and, inside the City of Milwaukee, the city tax.

Sales with their own sourcing rules. Most leases of goods with recurring payments follow a modified rule. The first payment is sourced like a sale. Later periodic payments are sourced to the property's primary location, as shown by the address the lessee gives you. Leases of motor vehicles, trailers, and aircraft, and of transportation equipment, have their own rules. Telecommunications services and direct mail also have their own rules. Sales by retail florists are sourced by Department rule. For county and city tax, motor vehicles, boats, recreational vehicles, and aircraft are taxed based on where the item is customarily kept, rather than where the sale takes place.

Worked example. You build furniture in Madison and sell a $900 table.

• The customer picks it up at your Madison shop. Dane County imposes the 0.5% county tax, so the rate is 5.5%: $49.50 in tax and a $949.50 total.
• You deliver the same table to a customer inside the City of Milwaukee. The rate is 7.9%: $71.10 in tax and a $971.10 total.
• You deliver it to a customer elsewhere in Milwaukee County, outside the city limits. The rate is 5.9%: $53.10 in tax and a $953.10 total.

Same table, same week, three different lines on your return. Wisconsin's return reports county tax by county and the City of Milwaukee tax on its own line, so keep the delivery address with every sale.

Food is exempt in Wisconsin, but the Streamlined carve-outs pull several items back into tax. The lines are precise. The categories that matter most to small sellers:

Groceries: food and food ingredients for home consumption are exempt. Unsweetened, non-carbonated beverages such as water and 100% juice are exempt too.

Candy, soft drinks, and supplements: all taxable. Wisconsin's candy definition excludes items that contain flour or require refrigeration. So a bar that lists flour as an ingredient is exempt food, not candy. A soft drink is a sweetened beverage. The definition excludes beverages with milk or milk substitutes or more than 50% juice, and it excludes powdered mixes. Dietary supplements are taxable.

Prepared food: generally taxable. That means food sold heated, food the seller mixed or combined into a single item, and food sold with the seller's eating utensils. Bakery items the seller makes, items sold unheated by weight or volume, and raw meat the customer must cook are not prepared food. Catering is taxable.

Clothing: taxable year-round, with no exemption and no sales tax holiday. Clothing, footwear, accessories, protective clothing, and sports and recreational equipment are all taxable as goods, which the law calls tangible personal property. Clothing alteration is a taxable service. Wisconsin held a one-time sales tax holiday in 2018 and has had no recurring or current holiday since.

Software and digital products: prewritten software is taxable however it is delivered, including by download. Custom software is exempt when separately stated. Software as a service is not taxable. Accessing prewritten software on the vendor's server is not a taxable sale. The condition: you do not operate or control the server and have no physical access to it. Specified digital goods such as audiovisual works, audio works, and e-books are taxable. A digital good is exempt only where the same good in tangible form would be exempt. Computer hardware is taxable. Internet access is not.

Prescription drugs and medical items: prescription drugs for treating humans are exempt. Prescribed contraceptives are exempt as prescription drugs. Durable medical equipment is exempt when it is for use in the buyer's home. The home-use condition is the hinge. Equipment used in a commercial or clinical setting is not covered unless another rule applies. Mobility-enhancing equipment is exempt. Vitamins and dietary supplements are taxable. Medical services are not taxable.

Newspapers and periodicals: newspapers are exempt. Periodicals are exempt only when sold by subscription and regularly issued at average intervals not exceeding three months. A magazine sold single-copy at retail is taxable. Job printing sold to customers is taxable except when sold for resale.

Manufacturing inputs and resale: machinery and equipment used exclusively and directly in manufacturing are exempt. So are materials that become part of, or are consumed in producing, the article to be sold. The "exclusively and directly" test is strictly applied. Anything bought for resale is exempt with a resale certificate.

Selling a mix of taxable and exempt items is where receipts get messy. Track the two buckets separately from the start.

Use tax is the counterpart of sales tax. It must be paid when Wisconsin sales tax, state, county, or city, is not charged and no exemption applies. You owe use tax if you buy taxable items from a retailer that does not collect Wisconsin sales tax. You also owe it if you bring taxable items into Wisconsin from another state. The use tax you owe is reduced by any sales tax you properly paid to another state on the same purchase.

All goods and services that are taxable under Wisconsin's sales tax are subject to use tax. The state use tax rate is 5%, the same as the state sales tax rate. If the item is used, stored, or consumed in a county or city that imposes a county or city tax, you owe that county or city use tax as well.

For a business, this shows up when you order equipment, supplies, or prewritten software from a vendor that didn't charge Wisconsin tax. Say you buy a $3,000 commercial espresso machine online for your Madison café and the invoice shows no Wisconsin tax. Dane County imposes the 0.5% county tax, so you owe 5.5% in use tax, or $165: $150 of state use tax and $15 of Dane County use tax. The Department's own example has the same shape. A camera shipped to a home in Dane County carries a 5.5% use tax rate.

Local use tax exists, with one general exception. County and city use taxes are imposed at the same rates as the county and city sales taxes. But the exception works like this. You buy an item in a Wisconsin county that has not adopted the county tax, or in a city that has not adopted the city tax. Later you bring it into a taxable county or city to use it. That purchase generally is not subject to the county or city use tax. The Department lists exceptions for:

• construction materials;
• titled items such as motor vehicles, boats, recreational vehicles, and aircraft;
• certain purchases by nonresidents.

How you report it. A registered business reports and pays use tax on its Wisconsin sales and use tax return. A business that isn't required to register for sales and use tax reports it quarterly on Form UT-5, Consumer Use Tax Return.

Calculate it on the total cost of the taxable goods or services, including separately stated charges such as shipping and handling. If you don't pay the use tax you owe, you may be subject to interest and penalties in addition to the tax. The Department audits businesses to ensure that use tax owed on out-of-state purchases is paid.

Wisconsin imposes sales tax on retail sales of tangible personal property and on the services specifically listed in Wis. Stat. § 77.52. A service that is not on the list is not taxable. The list reaches more services than a pure goods state taxes, but far from everything. If your service is on it, you charge the full combined rate on the whole charge, labor included. Taxable services include:

• Repair, service, alteration, cleaning, and maintenance of tangible personal property, including the labor. This includes items deemed tangible personal property for this purpose, such as carpeting and certain fixtures. It does not include services to real property generally. A $400 brake job in a 5.5% county carries $22 of tax on the whole invoice, parts and labor.
• Dry cleaning, laundry, and linen services (self-service machines excepted).
• Landscaping and lawn maintenance: mowing, planting, fertilizing, and tree and shrub trimming.
• Photographic services.
• Cable and video programming, admissions to amusement and recreation, parking, and towing.
• Lodging furnished to transients for a continuous period of less than one month. A stay of one month or more is exempt. Municipal room taxes and, in some areas, exposition or premier resort taxes apply on top.
• Leases and rentals of tangible personal property, which are taxable just like sales.

Services that are not on the list, and so not taxable, include pest control, snow removal, water conditioning, barber and beauty services, computer consulting and design, and all professional services (legal, accounting, engineering). Medical services are not taxable. Janitorial work needs care. Routine, repetitive cleaning of real property is not taxable. Specialized or non-repetitive cleaning of tangible personal property is taxable. And when a non-taxable service is billed together with a taxable repair or service of goods, the whole charge can become taxable. State them separately on the invoice.

Maintenance agreements are taxable too, optional or required, for tangible personal property and for prewritten software, unless the underlying item was exempt to the buyer. Maintenance of custom software is not taxable.

Contractors performing real property construction are the consumers of the building materials they use. They pay tax when they buy them. A supplier's sale of those materials to the contractor is a taxable sale.

Your reporting period is assigned by the Department. If you hold a seller's permit, you must file a return for each reporting period, even if no tax is due for that period. Your reporting period will be early monthly, monthly, quarterly, or annual, as determined by the Department of Revenue. The statute's default is quarterly. The Department may require monthly returns by written notice if your tax for a quarter exceeds $1,200. It may require the 20th-of-the-month "early monthly" schedule if it exceeds $3,600 per quarter. The Department reviews filing frequencies each year by the end of November, based on remittances for the 12 months ending October 31. It mails letters to affected filers and makes the change effective for periods beginning January 1. Its current bands:

• early monthly at $3,601 or more per quarter;
• monthly at $1,201 to $3,600 per quarter;
• quarterly at $601 to $1,200 per quarter;
• annual at $600 a year or less.

Returns are due the last day of the following month, except for early monthly filers. Returns must be filed by the last day of the month following the end of the reporting period. One exception: early monthly filers must file by the 20th of the month following the end of the reporting period. The Department's example: an early monthly filer's February return is due March 20 rather than March 31. When the due date falls on a weekend or legal holiday, it moves to the next business day.

Electronic filing is mandatory. Electronic filing has been mandated for all sales and use tax registrants. My Tax Account is the Department's online filing and payment system. Sales TeleFile and e-file transmission are the other electronic options. Returns filed through My Tax Account or TeleFile, and payments made by ACH debit, must be received by 4:00 p.m. Central on the due date.

One return, with the local breakout. County and city sales and use taxes are reported on the Wisconsin sales and use tax return, Form ST-12, not on separate local returns. Taxable sales to locations in counties with the county tax are reported by county on Schedule CT. Taxable sales to locations in Milwaukee County and to locations in the City of Milwaukee each have their own line. Purchases subject to county or city use tax are reported the same way. Keeping the delivery address with each sale turns that schedule into a sort, not a research project.

File every return, including zero returns. The return must be filed when due even if you have no tax to report or pay. If your reporting period is monthly, you file a return for each month of the year regardless of whether any tax is due. A return filed after the due date is subject to a $20 late filing fee.

Tip: if a rate error slips through, fix the rate first, then correct the affected returns. Undercollect and the difference comes out of your pocket. Overcollect and you owe refunds. Tax you collected as tax is never yours to keep.

Multiply the pre-tax price by your combined rate: 5% state plus, in most counties, the 0.5% county tax, for 5.5%. On a $1,200 sale delivered into a 5.5% county, that's $66 in tax and a $1,266 total. Inside the City of Milwaukee the combined rate is 7.9%: $1,200 × 7.9% is $94.80 for a $1,294.80 total.

7.9% inside the City of Milwaukee for sales on or after January 1, 2024: 5% state, 0.9% Milwaukee County, and 2% city. Elsewhere in Milwaukee County, outside the city limits, it is 5.9%. The city tax follows the city boundary. The Department of Revenue says a five-digit ZIP code without a street address isn't enough to tell whether a sale takes place in the city. So check a street address or nine-digit ZIP against the Department's rate chart and address lookup.

Only if your service is on Wisconsin's list. Repair, service, alteration, cleaning, and maintenance of tangible personal property, labor included; dry cleaning and laundry (self-service machines excepted); landscaping and lawn maintenance; photographic services; and admissions, parking, and towing are on it. Pest control, snow removal, barber and beauty services, computer consulting, and professional services such as legal, accounting, and engineering are not.

No. Food and food ingredients for home consumption are exempt. Candy, soft drinks, dietary supplements, and prepared food are taxable, and so is catering. Wisconsin's candy definition excludes items that contain flour or require refrigeration. So a bar that lists flour as an ingredient is exempt food.

Prewritten software is taxable however it's delivered, including by download. So are specified digital goods such as e-books, audio works, and audiovisual works. Custom software is exempt when separately stated. Software as a service is not taxable. Accessing prewritten software on the vendor's server isn't a taxable sale. The condition: you don't operate or control the server and have no physical access to it.

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You've got the rates and the rules that apply in Wisconsin. The harder part is applying them correctly on every sale, every quarter. QuickBooks automated sales tax calculates the right combined rate, tracks what you've collected, and shows what you owe when it's time to file.