Living in Illinois, working in Wisconsin
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Illinois
$3,320
on a seventy-thousand wage
Wisconsin would want
$2,701
The agreement is worth
$0
in money — the gain is one return, not two
File this
W-220
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Do not expect a check from this one. Between Illinois and Wisconsin, home charges $3,320 on a seventy-thousand-dollar wage and the work state would have charged $2,701. Because home is the dearer of the two, your bill is the same with or without the agreement. What changes is that you file once instead of twice.
- The size of this depends on your pay. Illinois charges $2,083 on forty-five thousand dollars and $4,805 on a hundred thousand. Against that, Wisconsin would have taken $4,482 at the higher figure. Check it against your own salary rather than the middle one.
- One piece of paper stands between you and this. Your employer needs the Wisconsin exemption certificate from you, usually once a year. Without it they must keep withholding Wisconsin tax from a Illinois resident. You would then be filing a return there after all.
- No dollar saving arises on this pairing: Illinois levies $3,320 against Wisconsin's $2,701 at seventy thousand dollars, and since the home charge is the larger, a resident credit would have absorbed the work state's tax entirely. ⭐ The agreement's value is the elimination of nonresident filing and of incorrect withholding across the year — which is the outcome most commuters are actually seeking when they ask about reciprocity.
- Liability under each schedule diverges with income: $2,083 and $4,805 in Illinois at forty-five and one hundred thousand dollars respectively, against $4,482 in Wisconsin at the upper point. The relevant figure for any individual is therefore the one at their own wage — the mid-ladder comparison is illustrative of direction, not of magnitude.
- The benefit is conditional on filing the exemption certificate with the employer, typically renewed annually. ⚠️ Employer withholding defaults to the work state in its absence, irrespective of eligibility, and the remedy is a nonresident return in Wisconsin. The practical failure mode is therefore not ineligibility but non-election — the agreement exists and the commuter simply never claims it.
What lands in your account
A $75,000 salary
Filing as
Paid
$2,232per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $58,025 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $16,975 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.63% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Illinois against Wisconsin
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
+$4,243a year in Wisconsin, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Illinois | Wisconsin |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,025 | $58,595 |
| Worth after local prices | $58,697 | $62,939 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.63% | 21.87% |
| State sales tax | 6.25% | 5% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 2.01% | 1.42% |
| Price level | 98.9 | 93.1 |
| Housing prices | 92.4 | 78.3 |
| Fuel tax | 49.6¢ | 30.9¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $2.98 | $2.52 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Illinois, Statewide average; Wisconsin, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$68,868in Wisconsin, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $74,115 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$6,132 |
| Prices in Wisconsin | 93 vs 99 |
State taxes and state price levels only. No city tax, and no housing market.
What each state would charge, across the ladder
Reference wages for a single filer, not a claim about anyone's salary. The last column is the difference the agreement actually removes — which is the gap between the two states, not Wisconsin's whole charge.
| Wage | Illinois charges | Wisconsin would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $2,083 | $1,365 | $0 |
| $70,000 | $3,320 | $2,701 | $0 |
| $100,000 | $4,805 | $4,482 | $0 |
What this page cannot tell you
- This covers wages from a job. It does not cover self-employment, rent or investment income — those follow the ordinary rules for Wisconsin.
- ⚠️ And it is a deal between two states. City and county taxes are not part of it, and several of these states have them.
- Every agreement in this dataset applies to wages and salaries only. Business, rental, gain and investment income sourced to Wisconsin remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a Wisconsin return notwithstanding the agreement.
- ⚠️ Reciprocity binds the state layer only and commonly does NOT extend to municipal or county income taxes — Pennsylvania's local earned income tax is the standard example, remaining payable at the place of employment despite the state-level agreement. Local liabilities are excluded from every figure on this page.