Living in Kentucky, working in Wisconsin
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Kentucky
$2,332
on a seventy-thousand wage
Wisconsin would want
$2,701
The agreement is worth
$369
a year
File this
W-220
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- If you live in Kentucky and work in Wisconsin, this agreement is worth real money. On a wage of seventy thousand dollars, Kentucky asks $2,332 and Wisconsin would have taken $2,701. You pay the Kentucky figure and stop there. That is a gap of $369 a year, every year you make the trip.
- The size of this depends on your pay. Kentucky charges $1,457 on forty-five thousand dollars and $3,382 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 Kentucky resident. You would then be filing a return there after all.
- For a Kentucky resident earning wages in Wisconsin, the agreement produces a genuine liability reduction rather than a purely procedural one. At seventy thousand dollars of wages, Kentucky levies $2,332 against Wisconsin's $2,701 on the same income, a difference of $369. ⚠️ Absent the agreement the saving would NOT be Wisconsin's full charge: you would file there as a nonresident and Kentucky would credit the tax paid, capped at its own liability on that income — so the counterfactual total is approximately the higher of the two figures, and the agreement's value is the spread between them.
- Liability under each schedule diverges with income: $1,457 and $3,382 in Kentucky 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
$2,273per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $59,085 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $15,915 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.22% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Kentucky against Wisconsin
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
−$2,371a year in Wisconsin, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Kentucky | Wisconsin |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $59,085 | $58,595 |
| Worth after local prices | $65,311 | $62,939 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.22% | 21.87% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 5% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.75% | 1.42% |
| Price level | 90.5 | 93.1 |
| Housing prices | 62.9 | 78.3 |
| Fuel tax | 25¢ | 30.9¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.10 | $2.52 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Kentucky, 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
$78,427in Wisconsin, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $75,761 |
|---|---|
| Raise you would need | +$3,427 |
| Prices in Wisconsin | 93 vs 90 |
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 | Kentucky charges | Wisconsin would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,457 | $1,365 | $0 |
| $70,000 | $2,332 | $2,701 | $369 |
| $100,000 | $3,382 | $4,482 | $1,099 |
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.
- The comparison here assumes a single filer and treats both states as taxing the same income. Your own numbers will differ.
- 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.
- Figures are computed for a single filer at the stated wage, treating Kentucky's and Wisconsin's definitions of taxable income as equivalent and modeling the resident credit as limited to the home state's own liability. Real returns diverge on filing status, deductions each state allows separately, and credit limitation rules — so these are comparative magnitudes, not a computation of anyone's liability.