Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: a Wisconsin for-profit corporation dissolves by filing Articles of Dissolution under Wis. Stat. § 180.1403 for $35, and Wisconsin does not gate the filing on a tax clearance certificate.
The filing, and what Wisconsin calls it
Wisconsin’s Articles of Dissolution (DFI Form 10) are filed with the Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate & Consumer Services, under Wis. Stat. §§ 180.1402 (board and shareholder dissolution) and 180.1403 (content).
The tax clearance question
Wisconsin does not gate the Articles of Dissolution on a tax clearance certificate. The official 3-page DFI form and its instructions, which exhaustively specify required content by cross-referencing the statute, contain no tax-clearance or Department of Revenue sign-off requirement of any kind. Final returns are the corporation’s separate, independent statutory obligation. (DFI Form 10 instructions (no clearance field present)) That does not erase the corporation’s final tax filings; it just means the Secretary of State’s office is not the one checking for them before accepting the paperwork.
Creditors and the claims window
Wisconsin makes available, but does not require, a formal notice-to-known-and-unknown-creditors procedure, with a 120-day claims-bar window. Optional. Known-claims deadline may not be fewer than 120 days after the written notice is effective, plus a 90-day bar after a rejection notice. Unknown claims are barred unless a proceeding commences within 2 years of newspaper publication. (Wis. Stat. §§ 180.1406, 180.1407)
What the filing costs
The Articles of Dissolution carries a $35 filing fee. An optional $100 expedited-service fee is available.
What this page does not answer
Dissolving the entity at the state level and closing it out with the IRS are two separate processes. A final federal return, IRS Form 966 in some circumstances, and canceling the EIN are governed by federal law, not by Wisconsin’s corporation statute, and this cluster does not source them. We have the state-filing answer at primary and the federal-closeout answer not at all.
This page sells nothing and links to no filing service. Dissolving a corporation is a filing-desk task with a statutory answer, and the answer is either in the state’s code and the Secretary of State’s own instructions or it is not.
This page covers a for-profit business corporation. If you are closing an LLC in Wisconsin instead, the filing, fee and statute are different: see dissolving an LLC in Wisconsin.
Sources
Every citation on this page is statutory or the Secretary of State’s own official filing instructions. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- Wis. Stat. §§ 180.1403, 180.1406, 180.1407: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/180/xiv/1403
- DFI Form 10, Articles of Dissolution: https://dfi.wi.gov/Documents/BusinessServices/BusinessEntities/Forms/CORP10.pdf