It's a question that can get people talking at the dinner table. Do the richest in Wisconsin, sometimes called the one percent, pay the lowest in overall taxes?
PolitiFact Wisconsin is on it.
Mike McCabe is not a household name but he could have an impact on your household budget. McCabe wants to be governor of Wisconsin.
He's calling for a change in the tax system and recently made a claim that caught the attention of PolitiFact Wisconsin.
"We specifically looked at a claim from Mike McCabe that the top 1 percent of people, of wealth earners in the state of Wisconsin pay the lowest share of state and local taxes," said Greg Borowski with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
McCabe pointed to a 2015 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
PolitiFact Wisconsin points out critics of the study have questioned its methodology but it looked at the amount of taxes various income groups pay.
"So if you think about the gas tax or the sales tax or property taxes," Borowski said, "everybody pays the same amount if you're buying a car or buying groceries whether you're making a million dollars or $10,000 a year."
The study did not include federal income taxes. It says people earning less than $22,000 a year paid 8.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes - people earning $399,000 or more paid 6.2 percent.
"So generally he's correct," Borowski said, "and part of the reason is that a lot of the state and local taxes are more regressive in nature than say the income tax."
PolitiFact Wisconsin rated McCabe claims Mostly True.
