Reference · Pennsylvania Act 32 and Ohio Chapter 718

Two towns, two claims on your pay.

Everyday commuter cars and a bus crossing a steel river bridge beside an American city.

Live in one town and work in another, and two local tax rates can reach your pay. What happens next depends on the state. Pennsylvania charges the higher of the two and stops there. Ohio charges both, then hands part of the first bill back as a credit — and how much comes back is the home city's own choice, not a state rule.

Pennsylvania resolves overlapping municipal earned income tax claims with a greater-of test: the employer withholds the higher of the employee's resident rate or the work location's non-resident rate, and the two municipalities apportion the proceeds. The worker's liability is never the sum. Ohio operates differently — both municipalities levy, and the residence extends a credit for tax paid elsewhere, bounded both by a share of that tax and by a ceiling expressed as a share of income. Each page below applies its own state's rule to a real commuting route for tax year2026.

Find your commute ↓

Pennsylvania routes

507

Cost nothing extra

386

Work rate bites

121

Ohio routes

503

Ohio, credit covers it

266

Ohio, commute costs

237

Pennsylvania: where the commute costs the most

Routes where the work location's rate is higher than the home rate, so traveling to work raises the bill. Ordered by how much, on a sixty-thousand-dollar salary.

Pennsylvania: the busiest routes

Ohio: where the credit runs out

Ohio routes where the home city's credit does not cover what the work city took, so the commute costs real money. Ordered by how much, on the same reference salary.

Ohio: the busiest routes

Across a state line: where it costs you

Two states can both tax the same wages. The state you live in credits what the state you work in took, but only up to its own bill — so you pay the higher of the two, and moving somewhere cheaper while the job stays put saves nothing. These are the crossings where that gap is largest.

Across a state line: the busiest crossings

Every route

Two states, because two states have sourced rules. Pennsylvania's is statutory and this project owns every one of its taxing jurisdictions. Ohio's credit is set city by city, so a route appears here only where the home city's own rule is known — which is why some large Ohio cities appear as destinations but not as origins. Other states need the same sourcing before they can be answered honestly.