Tom Tiffany Taxes Wisconsin

Tom Tiffany Publicly Promises a 10% Tax Cut. On Tape, He Told a Voter He Hopes to End Wisconsin's Income Tax.

Audio obtained by WKOW has Tom Tiffany telling a voter he hopes to eliminate Wisconsin's income tax after his first budget. Individual and corporate income taxes bring in $13.5 billion — 58% of the state's general fund, which pays for schools, healthcare and property tax relief.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 10, 2026

Tom Tiffany Publicly Promises a 10% Tax Cut. On Tape, He Told a Voter He Hopes to End Wisconsin's Income Tax. — Photo: Nam Y. Huh / AP, via WKOW

On the campaign trail, Tom Tiffany's tax pitch sounds modest: a 10% income tax cut for Wisconsin families earning under $150,000 a year.

That's not what he told a voter at a campaign event in late September.

According to audio obtained by WKOW, a man asked Tiffany whether he would eliminate the income tax. Tiffany answered:

"I will not be able to do it in the first budget, but, after that, we sure hope to be able to get it done."

That one sentence describes a much bigger plan than the one on his campaign mailers — and one that would hit every school, hospital and homeowner in the state.

What the income tax pays for

Wisconsin's state government runs on its general fund. In the 2026 fiscal year, that fund took in more than $23 billion, according to Department of Revenue data cited by WKOW. The individual income tax brought in $10.5 billion of it. The corporate income tax brought in another $3 billion. Together, that's more than 58% of the whole fund.

That money pays for K-12 schools, higher education, healthcare, prisons and property tax relief.

Jason Stein, president of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, told WKOW that getting rid of the income tax would be "extraordinarily difficult." To make it work, he said, "you'd really either have to raise other revenues in some way significantly, or you'd have to really reduce spending for every priority that the state's general fund touches."

The math he hasn't done in public

So where would $10.5 billion — or $13.5 billion, if he means corporate taxes too — come from?

Wisconsin isn't Texas or Alaska, which live off oil and gas money, or Florida and Nevada, which rely on tourism. WKOW reports that the most likely replacement is the sales tax. An analysis from the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy found the state would have to raise its sales tax from 5% to 12.69% to make up for losing the income tax entirely.

But Tiffany has pledged not to raise the sales tax at all.

That leaves only one door, as Stein put it: "Then what you're doing is just significantly reducing the level of services at the state and local level."

Cutting taxes this way doesn't make the cost disappear. It moves it — onto the schools, healthcare and property tax relief that same general fund pays for.

He won't say

WKOW asked Tiffany's campaign three simple questions: Is the goal to eliminate the income tax, or the 10% cut? Does he mean individual taxes, corporate taxes, or both? And what would he cut to pay for it?

He answered none of them. His statement repeated the 10% cut and the promise to return the surplus, then added that after his first budget, "I hope we will be able to deliver additional, long-term tax relief."

Even the 10% cut he does talk about comes without details. Stein told WKOW that who wins and who loses depends on how it's written — lower rates, a credit, a bigger deduction — and Tiffany hasn't said.

Who this kind of plan is for

Tiffany's own relationship with the income tax is worth remembering here. We've reported that he paid Wisconsin no personal income tax at all in six different years while campaigning as a small-business success story.

And his campaign is largely paid for by the very wealthy: more than $24 million of the $26 million he raised in two months came from three billionaires — Diane Hendricks and Richard and Liz Uihlein.

He isn't the only Republican running for governor on a promise like this. In Arizona, Andy Biggs wants to repeal the income tax too — almost $6 billion, a third of that state's budget — and says no one will pay for it.

The bottom line

Tom Tiffany campaigns on a 10% income tax cut, but on tape he told a voter he hopes to eliminate Wisconsin's income tax after his first budget. Individual and corporate income taxes raised $13.5 billion last year, more than 58% of the general fund that pays for schools, healthcare and property tax relief. Replacing that would take a 12.69% sales tax, which he has promised not to raise, and his campaign wouldn't say what he would cut instead.