The lack of a significant increase in jobs numbers highlights the credit’s inequity for Wisconsin taxpayers, said state Rep. Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, who has called for an effort in the Legislature to repeal the credit during the next session.

“It’s an unfair tax policy because it picks winners and losers. It favors manufacturers and farm owners over all other kinds of business,” she said. “We need to shut down this credit in the coming budget. Five years of free money is enough.”

The credit, which covers farmers along with manufacturers producing an array of goods from cheese to solar panels to heavy machinery to high tech computer parts, has cost the state double what was originally projected when it was put into the 2011-13 budget on the last day of negotiations in the Legislature. At the time, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated the credit would cost nearly $128.7 million annually when it was fully implemented. The most recent Fiscal Bureau estimate now shows the cost to be about $155 million more than the original projection in fiscal year 2017, the first state tax year in which the credit will take full effect.