Prior to 2001, Wisconsin had automatically updated its state tax code to reflect changes made at the federal level, as many states do. That year, the state “decoupled” from those automatic changes in an effort to help balance the state budget. This led to increasing complexity as the state code deviated from the federal code in the years since then.
The 2013-15 state budget adopts an Internal Revenue Code update to state statutes that nearly completely matches the state code to the federal one. For state tax year 2013, the new update adopts federal provisions existing prior to 2011 but not adopted by Wisconsin, most federal provisions in effect in 2011, and federal provisions added since 2011 – except for a number of provisions from the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-240).
For details of individual provisions adopted under this update as well as those items not adopted, see the link to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s budget paper on the issue: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/publications/budget/201315%20Budget/Documents/Budget%20Papers/285.pdf
While the budget made improvements in federalizing our tax code, full federalization of the state tax code would lead to the greatest ease in compliance costs for taxpayers.
