Cincinnati to Madeira
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Cincinnati ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1%
Madeira, on income earned there
Home city charges
1.8%
Cincinnati, residents
Credit back
$600
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no extra local taxCincinnati credits only part of what Madeira takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Cincinnati 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. Cincinnati gives full credit for the tax Madeira takes out of your pay, so the two settle down to the same bill you would owe at home. On sixty thousand that is $1,080 for the year. The commute shifts money between city halls and leaves your total alone.
- There is room here, and it is measurable. Madeira could take another $480 a year from you before Cincinnati's credit ran out. Until then the two cities settle it between themselves and you pay what you would have paid at home.
- Madeira shows just one commuting route in this data, and it starts in Cincinnati. Roughly 526 people make the trip. That is not the whole picture of who works there, only the part large enough to be published.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Madeira withholds about 1% on income earned there, and Cincinnati, which levies about 1.8% on residents, credits that payment in full without reaching its own ceiling. Liability at the reference salary is therefore $1,080 — precisely what the same earnings would attract with no commute at all. What the arrangement alters is the division of revenue between Madeira and Cincinnati, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Cincinnati credits tax paid to Madeira only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Madeira's levy currently sits below it with $480 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Madeira 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.
- Within this dataset Madeira draws a single recorded commuting flow of qualifying size — the one from Cincinnati, carrying roughly 526 workers. That reflects the reporting floor rather than the labor market: smaller flows certainly exist and fall below the threshold at which Census origin-destination statistics are published. No ranking against sibling routes is therefore available for this workplace.
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
| Madeira takes, on income earned there | $600 |
|---|---|
| Cincinnati charges residents | $1,080 |
| Less the credit Cincinnati gives back | $600 |
| Total local tax | $1,080 |
| If you also lived in Madeira | $1,080 |
| 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
- Here is the shape of it, because the arithmetic is easy to get wrong. You are taxed by both cities. What happens next is up to Cincinnati: it may credit all of what Madeira took, some of it, or none at all. That choice belongs to the city rather than to the state, which is why identical salaries in neighboring towns land so differently.
- These figures rest on a local rule, not a state one. Cincinnati decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Madeira. It is worth confirming the current position with the city or its collection agency, because this is the part most likely to have changed.
- 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 Cincinnati rather than your workplace in Madeira, and it is not credited against anything.
- One tax is on this page and it is the city one. State tax, federal tax and Social Security all still come out of your pay. None of them change when you cross the line between Cincinnati and Madeira. That is exactly why they are left out.
- The dollar figures rest on one assumed salary, sixty thousand. Double your pay and they double. Halve it and they halve. What stays put is the relationship between what Madeira charges and what Cincinnati gives back, which is the part worth carrying away.
- 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. Madeira taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Cincinnati taxes its residents on everything, and Cincinnati then credits some, all or none of what Madeira collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Cincinnati rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Cincinnati's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Cincinnati 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 Cincinnati can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Madeira 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 Madeira, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Cincinnati 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 Cincinnati and Madeira, 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 Cincinnati to Madeira 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?
You are taxed by both, then given credit for one. Working in Madeira costs about 1%; living in Cincinnati costs about 1.8%, reduced by whatever share of the work tax the home city recognizes.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Not a cent on this one. The crossing changes where the money is sent, not how much of it leaves, so your total matches a stay-at-home commute.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
526 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Madeira on the basis of work location at about 1%, Cincinnati on residence at about 1.8%. 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 526 workers per Census LODES, above the publication floor but below the dataset's upper quartile. Liability is determined by jurisdictional rates and residence rules alone; commuter volume has no bearing on it and is reported only as context.