Milwaukee County, Wisconsin property tax

ACS 5-year median real estate taxes paid (table B25103) divided by ACS 5-year median value of owner-occupied housing units (table B25077), county-wide. This is a ratio of two independently estimated medians — not the median of the ratio, and not a rate any parcel is billed. It reflects the actual mix of overlapping districts, exemptions and assessment caps as experienced by owner-occupants, and it lags: a 5-year sample centres about two and a half years before its end date.

Layer 1 of the county property-tax corpus: a MEASURED baseline from ACS 2020-2024 5-year, not a published rate. No statutory rate, assessment ratio or exemption has been collected for these counties yet, so nothing here should be read as what a particular property would be billed.

THE ASSESSMENT RATIO IS 1 AND THE ASSESSED VALUES ARE NOT FULL VALUE — BOTH ARE TRUE. s. 70.32(1) sets the legal standard at "the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale", so every taxed class carries a ratio of 1. What districts actually do is measured, published and far from it: DOR's Summary of 2025 Aggregate Ratios (report LGSSOA303WI, 15 December 2025) gives a median aggregate ratio of 0.8409 across 1,905 assessing districts, a mean of 0.8176, a minimum of 0.4416 (Town of Marshall) and a maximum of 2.0497 (Village of Fox Crossing); 808 districts sit below 0.80, 186 below 0.60, and only 704 of 1,913 fall within 0.90-1.10. This is why the corpus keeps `assessmentRatio` (the statute) and `assessmentLevel` (the measurement) apart, and why applying a nominal Wisconsin rate to a market value overstates the bill in most of the state. The gap is also why s. 70.63 apportions county, school and technical college levies on DOR's EQUALIZED value rather than on assessed value — otherwise an under-assessing municipality would export its levy share to its neighbours. THE LEVY LIMIT PERMITS ZERO GROWTH, AND ITS AMENDMENT HISTORY COULD NOT BE FULLY CHECKED. s. 66.0602(2)(a) forbids a political subdivision increasing its levy "by a percentage that exceeds the political subdivision's valuation factor", and (1)(d) defines that factor as the greater of net-new-construction growth or ZERO. So the baseline is no growth at all. On the amendment check, state the limit of what was established: docs.legis.wisconsin.gov serves s. 66.0602 in a sliding window that TRUNCATES AT SUB. (3)(fm) in both the live and the archival 2023-24 editions, so sub. (3)'s later paragraphs were outside both bodies and no diff of them was possible. Within the range both editions do serve, exactly one subunit is live-only: s. 66.0602(2m)(c), which requires a political subdivision imposing a tax under ss. 66.1113(2) and 77.994 to reduce its levy limit by 50 percent of the proceeds. That is a limit-REDUCING change and it is not reflected in this record's figures, which state the general rule rather than any subdivision-specific reduction. EVERY OTHER CAP IS ABSENT, AND THE ABSENCES WERE CHECKED. No homestead exemption exists in Wisconsin law. No assessment-growth cap, no circuit-breaker cap on the bill, no bill-growth cap. THE COUNTY RATE LIMIT REPEALED ITSELF AND STILL PRINTS: s. 59.605(2) reads as a live limit ("no county may impose an operating levy at an operating levy rate that exceeds .001..."), and s. 59.605(6), headed "Sunset of the limit", reads in full: "This section does not apply to a county's levy that is imposed in December 2011 or any year thereafter." A reader who stops at sub. (2) records a rate limit Wisconsin has not had for fourteen years. THE STATE FORESTATION TAX IS DEAD BY ITS OWN TERMS AND ALSO STILL PRINTS. s. 70.58(1) levies "an annual tax of two-tenths of one mill" and then, in the same subsection, provides that "no tax shall be levied under this section beginning with the property tax assessments as of January 1, 2017." The section was never repealed; the sunset was written into it. `statewideLevies` therefore carries only the ch. 76 levy on utility-class property, which is a real state levy on property that is exempt from the general property tax. CLASSIFIED IS TRUE AND MEANS SOMETHING NARROWER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE IN THIS CORPUS. Wis. Const. art. VIII, §1 requires uniformity, so the eight classes at s. 70.32(2)(a) segregate property without pricing it: no class ratio, no class rate. The only two departures are constitutional carve-outs — the April 1974 amendment (agricultural use value, and the 50% treatment of undeveloped and agricultural forest land) and the April 1999 amendment at art. IV, §24(6)(a) (lottery proceeds, which is what makes the lottery and gaming credit survivable after a Dane County court struck it down under uniformity). Do not read `classified: true` as licence to expect differential rates. THE THREE CREDITS DIVIDE TWO WAYS, NOT ONE. All three ride on the bill and reduce what is billed, but only the school levy tax credit is school-only: s. 74.09(3)(b)3. nets it into the school line. The first dollar credit (subd. 6m.) and the lottery and gaming credit (subd. 6.) are each subtracted from subd. 5, "The sum of the taxes levied under subds. 3. and 4." — the whole bill. Both are SIZED by the school tax rate, which is what invites the error. Separately, two Wisconsin reliefs that look like property tax relief are INCOME TAX credits and leave the bill untouched: the homestead credit (ss. 71.51-71.55) and the veterans and surviving spouses credit (s. 71.07(6e)). WHICH COUNTIES RUN A s. 70.99 COUNTY ASSESSOR SYSTEM — SUPPORTED, NOT PROVEN, AND NOT FOR THIS TAX YEAR. `assessingUnit` is recorded as municipal. Beyond the statutory default at s. 70.05(1), the supporting evidence is DOR's "Wisconsin Municipal Assessors" list (R. 03-26), which names an assessor or firm for each of 1,913 taxation districts — matching the district count in the 2025 TVC report exactly — and in which no row names a county office. That list sits at an undated, annually-overwritten path and post-dates this tax year, so it is cited with that caveat rather than as a 2025 fact. Secondary accounts state Kenosha was the only county ever to adopt and discontinued before 1995; no primary source for that was found. SCHEMA GAPS THIS STATE WITNESSES. `flat.amount` carries two different units within this one record — 0 as "the mechanic replaces the base" for the school levy credit and agricultural use value, and dollars of VALUE for the first dollar and lottery credits (#181). `ValuationBasis` cannot hold Wisconsin's three simultaneous standards, so the 50% classes are recorded as an exemption (see the vacant-land class note). And `assessmentRatio` being 1 while the measured level is 0.84 is not a defect but it is a trap: the two fields answer different questions and this record is the sharpest example of the difference in the corpus.