News of the Day

Governor Evers Appoints Summer Strand to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin

Yesterday, Governor Evers announced his appointment of Summer Strand to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC). The appointment fills a vacancy created by the resignation of Ellen Nowak, effective March 1, 2023. This appointment is effective March 2, 2023, for a six-year term expiring in 2029.

Strand has a long history of public service. Strand currently serves on the State of Wisconsin Building Commission (SBC), having been appointed by Gov. Evers in 2019 to serve as the sole citizen member of the commission. Strand also previously served as the administrator of the Division of Facilities Development at the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA) from August 2011 to May 2016, where she was secretary of the SBC and has responsible for helping develop and administer the approximately $1 billion state building program for all state agencies and the UW System.

“I am confident my public and private sector experience, legal background, and leadership and communication skills will be an asset to the Commission as we take on many of the important issues Wisconsinites are facing today,” said Strand. “I am grateful for this opportunity and excited to get to work.”

Strand comes to the PSC from the Walbec Group, a construction and engineering company, where she is the director of government affairs, responsible for maintaining relationships and coordinating with a variety of stakeholders, associations, and industry groups. Additionally, she previously served as a program and policy analyst-advanced in the Division of State Facilities at DOA in 2011. From 2008 to 2011, Strand also served as chief of staff to State Sen. Jeff Plale in the Wisconsin State Legislature.

Strand is a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin and earned her law degree from the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in 2006, as well as her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. She lives in Waunakee with her husband, Brandon, and their two kids.

IRS Issues Final Regulations on E-File for Businesses

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service issued final regulations amending the rules for filing returns and other documents electronically (e-file). These regulations will require certain filers to e-file beginning in 2024.

T.D. 9972 affects filers of partnership returns, corporate income tax returns, unrelated business income tax returns, withholding tax returns, certain information returns, registration statements, disclosure statements, notifications, actuarial reports and certain excise tax returns. The final regulations reflect changes made by the Taxpayer First Act (TFA) to increase e-filing without undue hardship on taxpayers.

Specifically, the final regulations:

  • reduce the 250-return threshold enacted in prior regulations to generally require electronic filing by filers of 10 or more returns in a calendar year. The final regulations also create several new regulations to require e-filing of certain returns and other documents not previously required to be e-filed;
  • require filers to aggregate almost all information return types covered by the regulation to determine whether a filer meets the 10-return threshold and is required to e-file their information returns. Earlier regulations applied the 250-return threshold separately to each type of information return covered by the regulations;
  • eliminate the e-filing exception for income tax returns of corporations that report total assets under $10 million at the end of their taxable year, and
  • require partnerships with more than 100 partners to e-file information returns, and they require partnerships required to file at least 10 returns of any type during the calendar year to e-file their partnership return.

To help with this process, the IRS created a new, free online portal last month to help businesses file Form 1099 series information returns electronically. Known as the Information Returns Intake System (IRIS), this free electronic filing service is secure, accurate and requires no special software. Though available to any business of any size, IRIS may be especially helpful to any small business that currently sends their 1099 forms on paper to the IRS.

The final regulations generally provide hardship waivers for filers that would experience hardship in complying with the e-filing requirements and administrative exemptions from the e-filing requirements to promote effective and efficient tax administration.

Janet Protasiewicz, Dan Kelly to Face Off in High-Stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

The stage for Wisconsin’s pivotal April Supreme Court election is set after Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz and former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly emerged as the top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s four-way primary.

With 94 percent of precincts reporting as of 10:40 p.m., unofficial results reported by the Associated Press showed Protasiewicz with 46 percent of the vote followed by Kelly with 24 percent. Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow came in third with 22 percent of the vote, followed by Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell with about 8 percent.

Tuesday’s results place Protasiewicz and Kelly on a collision course toward what will be one of the most closely watched elections in the country this year. While the race is officially nonpartisan, Protasiewicz is backed by Democrats and Kelly by Republicans.

The campaign is expected to shatter spending records for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and it could quite possibly break the national spending record for a state supreme court contest.

The prize attracting so much attention is a ten-year term on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, where the winner will decide the high court’s ideological balance. A Kelly victory would preserve the court’s 4-3 conservative edge, while a Protasiewicz win would give liberals a majority for the first time since 2008.

 

Tuesday is Primary Election Day in Wisconsin

Tuesday is primary Election Day in Wisconsin. There are lots of local primaries, including challenges to incumbent mayors in Madison, Green Bay and Racine.

At the top of the ballot, the only statewide race will narrow the field for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Conservative candidates are Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow and former Justice Dan Kelly. Liberals are Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz.

The top two vote getters advance to the April general election. Find out what’s on your ballot at myvote.wi.gov.

Without Dissent, Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Blow to ‘Dark Store’ Tax Theory

The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the City of Delavan on Thursday, deciding that its property tax assessments of a Lowe’s Home Improvement store were correct after the store had sued in an attempt to get a lower assessment, and therefore pay less property tax.

In Lowe’s v. Delavan, the hardware store was challenging city assessments of its property in 2016 and 2017. The store, located in a “thriving retail area,” according to the city, was assessed at $8,922,300 in both years by Delavan’s assessor. The outside assessor Lowe’s hired valued the property at $4,600,000, nearly 50% less than the city’s value. An outside assessor hired by the city valued the property even higher than the city’s original assessment at $9,200,000.

The store appealed the assessment at the local board of review and then filed a lawsuit in Walworth County Circuit Court. The circuit court sided with the city, so Lowe’s appealed the decision. The appeals court also sided with the city, so Lowe’s appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

At issue in the lawsuit were the stores used by each assessor to come up with the market value. When a store hasn’t been sold recently, which in this case hadn’t happened because the property had operated as a Lowe’s since it was constructed in 2005, assessors find comparable stores in the area to come up with a value.

The assessor hired by Lowe’s had almost entirely used stores that were “dark,” vacant or considered distressed.

Three of the stores had once been locations of the now-defunct American TV and Appliance and had been sold after the business closed through a receivership, meaning they were forced sales to cover the business’ debts and therefore the circuit court considered them not comparable to the Lowe’s. Another of the properties was a closed former K-Mart that had been vacant for four years prior to its sale, classifying it officially as a dark store. The K-Mart was also not in a busy retail area like the Delavan location. The assessor also used a Walmart in Brown Deer that had initially been a Lowe’s but closed after just five years in that location and sat vacant for two years before the purchase by Walmart. The final store used was a shuttered Target in Kenosha that had gone dark after sitting vacant for four years.

The city’s outside expert, on the other hand, used comparison properties that had all been sold while still occupied.

In a majority decision written by Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and joined by Justices Rebecca Dallet, Brian Hagedorn, Jill Karofsky, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler, the court decided that both the circuit court and appeals court were correct when they decided that the Lowe’s assessor’s comparison properties weren’t adequate for assessing the property’s value. Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote a concurring opinion that Roggensack joined.

“Generally, a site that can sustain a business is more valuable than one that cannot,” Walsh Bradley wrote in the majority opinion. “The highest and best use of a store in an area that is conducive to business (and is in fact operating as a business) is different from the highest and best use of a property that contains a failed big-box store. Lowe’s’ argument treats these different things alike, which is not [an] “apples to apples” comparison …”

 

Can Democrats and Republicans Compromise on Governor Evers’ Budget Priorities?

When he unveiled his budget proposal Wednesday, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers offered up a long list of ideas for how to spend the state’s record surplus, telling lawmakers he was confident that some of his budget plans would win bipartisan support.

“I know the people in this building might not agree with me on the periphery of every policy all the time. That is democracy, right?” he told the crowd.

But that window for compromise seemed to close quickly. Immediately after his address, Republican leaders said they’d rewrite Evers’ budget from scratch.

“His priorities might be in line with where we are on the topics. But the solutions are what’s dramatically different,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

One area where Republicans and Democrats might find common ground is on the issue of shared revenue for local communities.

Evers has made funding local governments a hallmark of his platform as governor and in his reelection campaign last year. Republicans pushed back on this until recently. They’ve started to signal support for funding certain local priorities, like law enforcement.

Evers and Republican leadership rarely met in Evers’ first term. After meeting for the first time in two years in December, Evers and Vos both expressed interest in talking more.

“Let’s start having a conversation,” Evers told reporters on Thursday. “Democracy, I think, kind of demands more than just saying, ‘Well, we don’t like it.'”

Governor Evers Budget Plan Would Create Family Leave Plan, Cut Taxes and Boost School Funding

Framing the state’s historic surplus as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Gov. Tony Evers proposed a budget Tuesday that would spend the state’s reserves on a little bit of everything.

The governor’s budget proposal includes a new tax cut, a $2.6 billion investment in schools and a $244 million investment in a new paid family and medical leave program for private and public workers.

The list of major new initiatives from the governor went on, with hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for everything from roads, to lead pipe replacement, to the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium.

During his budget address Wednesday evening at the Capitol, Evers, a Democrat, called the plan a “breakthrough budget,” telling lawmakers that with the state’s projected $7.1 billion budget surplus, they had an obligation to address needs that had been long neglected.

But many of the governor’s proposals will almost assuredly be dead on arrival in the Legislature, where majority Republicans have already signaled they’ll toss Evers’ budget aside and build their own, as they did during Evers’ first term.

Shortly after Evers spoke, Republicans seized on the size of the budget. It would spend almost $104 billion overall thanks to a nearly 18 percent increase in the first year of the budget. And when it comes to state taxpayer funding — the part of the budget where lawmakers and governors have the most control — it would grow by 23 percent in the first year of the budget.

“While there are some areas in Governor Evers’ budget that I’m sure we will help to find common ground on, our solutions are going to look dramatically different,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters afterward.

U.S. Retail Sales Post Biggest Gain in Nearly Two Years

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that retail sales surged 3.0% last month, the largest increase since March 2021, after declining by an unrevised 1.1% in December.

Last month’s broad increase in retail sales was led by motor vehicle purchases, with receipts at auto dealers accelerating 5.9%. Sales at service stations were unchanged, despite rising gasoline prices. Online retail sales rebounded 1.3%.

Furniture stores sales jumped 4.4%. Receipts at food services and drinking places, the only services category in the retail sales report, soared 7.2%.

Electronics and appliance store sales shot up 3.5%. There were also hefty increases in clothing stores sales as well as receipts at general merchandise and health and personal care stores. Sporting goods, hobby and musical instrument stores eked out a 0.2% gain, while building material and garden equipment suppliers receipts climbed 0.3%.

Excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales increased 1.7% last month. These so-called core retail sales fell by an unrevised 0.7% in December.

Core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product.

Governor Evers Wants to Give Brewers Nearly $300 Million to Repair Stadium

The governor’s office announced Tuesday that his executive budget will include $290 million from the surplus for stadium repairs. In exchange for the money, the Brewers have agreed to extend their lease at the stadium by 13 years through 2043, the administration and the team said.

The money for the stadium repairs would be a one-time cash payment from the state surplus, which currently stands at around $7 billion. But the proposal is sure to rekindle old arguments over whether privately owned sports teams deserve public handouts to continue operating — especially the Brewers, who have benefited immensely from a sales tax that helped build the stadium.

The stadium opened in 2001 as Miller Park, replacing the Milwaukee’s aging County Stadium. The construction price tag was about $392 million, funded largely through a 0.1% sales tax imposed in Milwaukee County and the four other counties surrounding the stadium.

The tax was ultimately enacted that year and generated about $605 million before it expired in 2020. The stadium name changed to American Family Field in 2021 after the Brewers struck a 15-year naming rights deal with the insurance company.

The Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District essentially serves as the Brewers’ landlord at the stadium. The Brewers’ lease calls for the district to cover repairs, but Evers’ office said the end of the sales tax has left the district short of funds, according to the governor’s office and the Brewers.

“We oppose the return of the five-county tax, and we are prepared to commit to a lease extension for the Brewers to remain at American Family Field through at least 2042,” the Brewers’ Schlesinger said.

Evers’ office said the $290 million payment will go to the district, which will invest the money and collect interest on it as it disburses funds to cover repairs.

Former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, signed a bill in August 2015 to contribute $250 million in taxpayer dollars to help pay for the Fiserv Forum, the Milwaukee Bucks’ arena. Brown County residents approved a half-cent sales tax in 2000 to help pay for renovations at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers. That tax expired in 2015 after generating about $310 million.

Governor Evers Announces Details of $1.2 Billion Tax Cut Proposal

Governor Tony Evers announced new details of his proposal to cut taxes by more than $1.2 billion in the next two-year state budget on Sunday as Wisconsin’s budget surplus has topped $7 billion.

Governor Evers first proposed the tax cut last August that includes a 10 percent state income tax cut for the middle class. Individuals making less than $100,000 and married couples or joint-filers making at or below $150,000 would benefit from the proposal. Evers said the proposal would provide $839.6 million over the budget for low- and middle-income residents with an average cut of more than $200 annually for 1.9 million filers.

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor and GOP leaders have frequently been at odds over fiscal policy. Their differing views on tax breaks for residents is just one of many disputes over how to spend the state’s record budget surplus, which is on top of an additional $1.7 billion set aside for Wisconsin’s rainy day fund.

In his budget, Evers is also proposing to:

  • Increase the federal Earned Income Tax Credit to more than $300 annually on average for 200,000 families
  • Enhance the Homestead Tax Credit to help seniors and increase eligible household income to $35,000
  • Expand property tax relief for veterans with disabilities by providing $53.5 million over 2 years
  • Create a caregiver tax credit to help with caregiving costs limited to $500 in a tax year, providing $195 million in tax relief over 2 years to around 240,000 taxpayers
  • Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit from 50 to 100 percent of the federal credit in 2023
  • Adopt federal tax changes to protect student loan borrowers and adopt remaining provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which would raise $388.2 million over 2 years
  • Repeal the personal property tax, providing more than $200 million to businesses
  • Increase a research credit for businesses from 15 to 15 percent in 2024
  • Limit the 30 percent long-term capital gains exclusion to individuals making less than $400,000, raising $339.4 million over 2 years
  • Limit the manufacturing tax credit to the first $300,000 in qualified production income, raising $655.1 million over 2 years to offset tax breaks for the middle class and businesses