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Wisconsin homeowners are staring down the prospect of higher property taxes for the next 400 years after the state’s supreme court upheld Gov. Tony Evers‘ partial veto to extend school funding increases for the next four centuries.
The move comes after school levies already rose by $327 million in 2024 and are projected to grow an additional $260 million in 2025–26 and $520 million by 2027 if lawmakers do not add more state funding sources to the budget (as they failed to do this year), according to state projections.
For families, that means the likelihood of bigger bills arriving this fall as school districts set their levies—a consequence critics call the longest tax increase in U.S. history. Supporters argue the annual $325-per-student revenue boost is essential to keep classrooms afloat amid rising costs, even if it shifts more of the burden onto property owners.
What the 400-year veto did
Wisconsin’s governor holds a veto pen like no other. With a single stroke, the governor can reshape words and numbers in the state budget into something entirely new.
In 2023, Evers wielded that authority in a way previously only imagined. By striking out a hyphen and the digits “20” in “2024–25,” he turned a routine, two-year school funding increase into a mandate lasting until the year 2425. A $325-per-pupil boost, intended as a short-term measure, suddenly became the longest revenue limit increase in Wisconsin history.
Critics called it a breathtaking overreach. But in April 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the maneuver, declaring it constitutional and squarely within Evers’ powers.
Now, as districts prepare to set their levies this fall, the change is moving from legal abstraction to household reality. Revenue limits dictate how much schools can raise through a mix of state aid and local property taxes.
By extending the annual increase indefinitely, Evers guaranteed districts a steady stream of new dollars. However, it’s not guaranteed that money will come from property tax increases alone.
Will districts use the new funding?
If history is any guide, it’s most likely that schools will take advantage of the new funding limits. In the 2024-25 school year, only about 14% of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts were taxed below their limits. The rest raised as much revenue as state law allowed, a sign of just how tight budgets have become.
For school leaders, the choice isn’t a choice at all. With salaries, utilities, and basic supplies climbing in price, the new authority is viewed less as an opportunity than as a necessity.
While “theoretically possible,” it is “unlikely” districts would forgo additional funding, Dan Rossmiller, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
While the annual $325-per-pupil increase provides predictability, it still fails to keep pace with inflation, which has hovered between 2% and 3%. In other words, even the largest revenue-limit increase in state history doesn’t buy as much as it once did.
That gap leaves districts under pressure to take advantage of every dollar available. For homeowners, it means property taxes may continue to be the lever districts pull when state support falls short.
Does this mean higher property taxes?
The evidence is already showing up. In 2024, school property tax levies climbed by $327 million, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. That surge came from two places: the new $325-per-pupil revenue limit increase and a wave of voter-approved referendums that let districts exceed their caps for building projects and operations.
Without more state aid, districts leaned more heavily on property taxes to capture the additional revenue. The Policy Forum summed it up this way: “In general, the larger the revenue limit increase, the larger the property tax increase—unless state lawmakers also significantly raise general school aids.”
This year, lawmakers didn’t add that offset—which means when districts finalize their levies this fall, homeowners should expect their bills to rise again.
Are homeowners locked in to 400 years of higher taxes?
Opponents wasted no time branding Evers’ maneuver the “400-year property tax increase.” For groups like Americans for Prosperity, the math is simple: If the increase lasts until 2425, Wisconsin families are saddled with rising tax bills for generations to come.
But the reality is less permanent than the slogan. State budgets aren’t carved in stone; they’re rewritten every two years. Lawmakers could choose to boost state aid to offset local levies. They could expand property tax credits to ease the burden on homeowners. And Republicans are already campaigning on a promise to repeal the veto outright if they control both chambers and the governorship after Evers steps down.
Even education leaders stress that the “400 years” framing is more politics than prophecy.
Property taxes are “locked into it, until such time that the Legislature changes” the law, Rossmiller said. In other words, the funding formula could last four centuries, or it could be rewritten as soon as the next budget cycle.
For now, though, the law is on the books. And this fall, when districts finalize their levies, Wisconsin homeowners will see whether “400 years” means a bigger bill in the mailbox.