Akron to Cuyahoga Falls
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Akron ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2%
Cuyahoga Falls, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Akron, residents
Credit back
$1,200
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no extra local taxAkron credits only part of what Cuyahoga Falls takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Akron bar is the credit it hands back. Municipal income tax only — state, federal and payroll tax apply on top, and an Ohio school district income tax may too.
What this commute actually costs
- Some Ohio commutes cost you real money. This one does not. Akron gives full credit for the tax Cuyahoga Falls takes out of your pay, so the two settle down to the same bill you would owe at home. On sixty thousand that is $1,500 for the year. The commute shifts money between city halls and leaves your total alone.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Akron runs out once Cuyahoga Falls takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $300 a year of slack. A rate rise in Cuyahoga Falls would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- Akron is the biggest single source of workers for Cuyahoga Falls. Around 4,682 people make the trip, ahead of every other origin the data records, 3 in all. That is why this pairing is worth setting out rather than leaving people to work out alone.
- Around 4,682 workers make this trip from Akron into Cuyahoga Falls. It is one of the busier commutes in the state, which is part of why it gets a page of its own.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Cuyahoga Falls withholds about 2% on income earned there, and Akron, which levies about 2.5% on residents, credits that payment in full without reaching its own ceiling. Liability at the reference salary is therefore $1,500 — precisely what the same earnings would attract with no commute at all. What the arrangement alters is the division of revenue between Cuyahoga Falls and Akron, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Akron credits tax paid to Cuyahoga Falls only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Cuyahoga Falls's levy currently sits below it with $300 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Cuyahoga Falls to raise its rate past that point, the excess would cease to be credited and would fall on the worker rather than on either treasury.
- This is the largest recorded flow into Cuyahoga Falls. Of 3 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Akron supplies the most workers at approximately 4,682. The credit outcome described above therefore applies to more commuters than any other single route into the city, which matters when the outcome is an adverse one: the same ordinance governs every origin, but the populations behind each are very different.
- Census origin-destination statistics record approximately 4,682 workers commuting from Akron to Cuyahoga Falls, placing this among the larger intra-state flows in Ohio. The outcome set out above therefore has aggregate fiscal consequence for both municipalities, not merely individual consequence for the worker: the credit Akron does or does not extend is applied to every one of them at once.
Where the money goes
A $75,000 salary
- Federal income tax$7,670
- Social Security and Medicare$5,738
- State income tax$1,346
- Yours$60,246
| Federal income tax10.23% | $7,670 |
|---|---|
| Social Security and Medicare7.65% | $5,738 |
| State income tax1.79% | $1,346 |
| Yours80.33% | $60,246 |
The arithmetic, step by step
| Cuyahoga Falls takes, on income earned there | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Akron charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Akron gives back | $1,200 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Cuyahoga Falls | $1,500 |
| Difference | $0 |
On a reference salary of $60,000 a year. Both rates and the credit ceiling are shares of income, so every figure scales with your own pay.
What this page does not cover
- Two guesses about this are wrong, and they miss in opposite directions. The rates are not added together. Nor do you simply pay whichever is higher, which is how it works across the border in Pennsylvania. Cuyahoga Falls taxes what you earn there, Akron taxes everything you earn, and then Akron decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- The credit rule on this page belongs to Akron, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Cuyahoga Falls or at the state level for these numbers to move. Check the current rule before you rely on it.
- This page covers city income tax only. Your school district may charge its own on top, and many in Ohio do. That one follows your address in Akron rather than your workplace in Cuyahoga Falls, and it is not credited against anything.
- These figures are the local layer alone. Whatever Akron and Cuyahoga Falls take sits on top of state, federal and payroll tax. Those three are the same wherever in Ohio you work, so putting them in would bury the difference this page is about.
- Sixty thousand a year is the assumption behind the dollars. It is stated rather than measured. No wage figure exists for a place the size of Akron. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in Cuyahoga Falls.
- Two misreadings bracket the correct answer and both are common. Ohio does not simply add the two rates together, which would overstate the charge; nor does it apply only the higher of them, which is Pennsylvania's rule and would understate it wherever the credit is partial. Cuyahoga Falls taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Akron taxes its residents on everything, and Akron then credits some, all or none of what Cuyahoga Falls collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Akron rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Akron's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Akron alone. Ohio's uniform framework governs definitions, filing and withholding; it does not compel any municipality to credit tax paid to another. A council vote in Akron can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Cuyahoga Falls or in state law, which is a materially different exposure from a rate set by statute.
- Ohio school district income tax is a separate levy from municipal income tax and is excluded from these figures. It is imposed by school district of residence rather than by municipality, it is unaffected by employment in Cuyahoga Falls, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Akron whose school district levies one owes it in addition to everything shown here, which is why the totals on this page are a municipal position rather than a complete local one.
- Only municipal income tax is modeled. Ohio's state income tax, federal income tax and payroll taxes all apply in addition and are invariant to the boundary between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison. A complete tax position requires adding them; a comparison of the two locations does not.
- Dollar figures are computed against a stated reference salary of sixty thousand rather than a municipal wage average, which no published source provides for Ohio municipalities. Both rates and the credit ceiling are proportional to income, so every figure scales linearly: the Akron to Cuyahoga Falls differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it, and the rate relationship holds at every level. The one caveat is that whether the ceiling binds at all is itself scale-invariant here, because it too is expressed as a share of income rather than as a fixed dollar cap.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
Two claims, one partly canceled. Cuyahoga Falls takes about 2% because you work there, Akron charges about 2.5% because you live there, and the home city credits some of the first against the second.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
On this route, nothing. You owe exactly what you would have owed working at home — the boundary is real on a map and invisible on your pay stub, which is not true of every pair of towns here.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
It is. 4,682 workers travel this pair, per the federal origin-destination survey; smaller routes fall below the publication floor and get no page.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Cuyahoga Falls on the basis of work location at about 2%, Akron on residence at about 2.5%. The residence municipality grants a credit for tax paid to the work municipality, commonly capped as a share of income. Net liability is the residence tax less that credit, floored at zero, plus the work tax.
Why is the marginal cost of this crossing zero?
Marginal liability from working outside the residence jurisdiction is zero on this route. The crossing alters the distribution of revenue between jurisdictions but not the employee's total. ⚠️ This is route-specific and does not generalise to other pairs in the same dataset.
What is the basis for including this route?
Route volume is 4,682 workers, sourced from Census LODES origin-destination data. Pairs below the publication threshold are excluded rather than imputed, so page existence reflects measured commuting volume.