Income available for child support — a Wisconsin worksheet for business owners

Enter numbers from your own returns — W-2 box 5, Form 1040 lines, Schedule K-1 boxes and the distributions you actually received — and the worksheet builds a line-by-line report under Wisconsin's child-support rule, Wis. Admin. Code ch. DCF 150, with the reason and the authority for every line. It can also show what the same numbers become under the inflated method explained in the flawed-report example.

Informational worksheet — general information, not legal advice. It is not a court form and does not decide what a court will find. Control, business necessity and deviation are decided on evidence. Talk to a Wisconsin family-law attorney before relying on it.

Enter annual amounts in dollars for one tax year. Leave anything that doesn't apply at 0.

1. Personal income (Form 1040 and W-2) Wages W-2 box 5 (Medicare wages), all employers — includes pre-tax 401(k) deferrals. S-corp owners (over 2%): also add company-paid health premiums, which are in box 1 but not box 5. Taxable interest Form 1040 line 2b Ordinary dividends Form 1040 line 3b Sole-proprietor / single-member LLC profit Schedule C line 31 — a single-member LLC that has not elected corporate tax status reports here (a loss is a negative number) Owner’s draws from that business Money you moved from the business account to yourself. Not income on its own — used only by the comparison method, to show the double count. Personal rental / royalty income Schedule E Part I net, property you hold personally Other income Unemployment, Social Security, income-replacing awards, etc.

2.1 Pass-through business (Schedule K-1) Business name (for your report) Entity type Your ownership % I can individually control, or access, the business's earnings DCF 150.02(13)(a)9. Being able to sell your shares is not the same thing (Winters ¶10). Most sole or majority owners should tick this. If it is disputed, run it both ways. Ordinary business income 1120-S K-1 box 1 Other K-1 income Rental, interest, dividends, royalties (boxes 2–6) Net § 1231 gain 1120-S K-1 box 9 — usually a sale of business equipment or property Depreciation recapture inside box 1 § 1245 recapture from the entity's Form 4797 Part II (ask the business's preparer) Salary this business paid you Form 1120-S line 7 (compensation of officers) — your part only. It is already in your W-2 above; enter it here so the worksheet can show it is not counted twice. Distributions you actually received 1120-S K-1 box 16D — match it to your bank deposits …of which paid to cover your tax on the K-1 Only matters if you turn on the tax-distribution argument below Your share of depreciation claimed Entity return, Form 4562 (including bonus and § 179) × your ownership % Your share of straight-line depreciation Same assets, straight-line over federal useful lives — DCF 150.02(13)(a)9.b. Your share of retained earnings on the balance sheet Schedule L / M-2. Never counted as annual income; used only for the comparison.

3. Sales of property you hold personally Gain recognized this year Schedule D / Form 4797 / Form 6252 — the taxable gain for this year only Interest received on an installment note Actually received this year Installment gain not yet received Gain on future payments (Form 6252). Used only by the comparison method.

4. Court adjustments Wages paid to dependent household members Added back — DCF 150.03(2)(a) Business-expense adjustment Court-determined, DCF 150.03(2)(c): + adds back an unnecessary expense, − subtracts a necessary one

5. Arguments and comparison Treat tax distributions as not available income An argument, not settled law. Winters did not decide it (¶13), and an unpublished later case refused to exclude tax distributions on that label alone. Remove depreciation recapture from a controlled business's income An argument that past years already added the depreciation back. No Wisconsin appellate holding found. Show the inflated-report method for comparison

Your report

Income available for child support (year) $0

Per month (÷ 12, DCF 150.02(21)) $0

Inflated-report method, same inputs $0 ($0/mo)

Enter your figures above, or load the fictional example, to build a report.

The monthly figure is the input to Wisconsin's percentage standard (DCF 150.035). This worksheet stops at income. It does not apply shared-placement, serial-family, low-income or high-income rules, and it does not decide a deviation under Wis. Stat. § 767.511(1m).

How to read the result

Control is the fork. Without individual control or access, undistributed K-1 income is not counted, but distributions you actually received are (Winters v. Winters). With control, the business's taxable income counts, apart from what you prove is reasonably necessary for growth.
Distributions are counted once. They are paid out of the K-1 income, so adding both counts the same dollars twice. The same goes for a sole proprietor's draws against Schedule C profit.
An owner's salary is counted once. It is on the W-2 and already deducted before the K-1 income, so adding it back to the business's income double-counts it.
Balance-sheet retained earnings are never annual income. They are the total of past years.
A one-time gain actually received still counts for that year. The worksheet shows it separately so a court can decide whether to build it into an ongoing order.

Read the full explainer: Phantom income and child support in Wisconsin · The flawed report, corrected line by line · Business owners and former owners · Wisconsin support estimator