Cleveland to Berea
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Cleveland ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2%
Berea, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Cleveland, 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 taxCleveland credits only part of what Berea takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Cleveland 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
- You can stop worrying about this one. Cleveland credits everything Berea withholds, right up to its own rate of about 2.5%. Crossing the line to work adds nothing. Local income tax comes to $1,500 for the year, exactly as it would if the job were on your own street.
- This is closer than it looks. Cleveland covers what Berea takes, but only up to a limit, and Berea is $300 a year short of it. Raise the work rate past that and the commute stops being free.
- No other commute into Berea is big enough to appear here, so there is nothing to rank this one against. The route from Cleveland carries around 923 workers. Smaller streams get folded away by the counting rules rather than by the map.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Berea withholds about 2% on income earned there, and Cleveland, 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 Berea and Cleveland, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Cleveland credits tax paid to Berea only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Berea's levy currently sits below it with $300 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Berea 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 Berea draws a single recorded commuting flow of qualifying size — the one from Cleveland, carrying roughly 923 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
| Berea takes, on income earned there | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Cleveland charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Cleveland gives back | $1,200 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Berea | $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
- Do not add the two rates up, and do not assume the bigger one simply wins. Neither is how Ohio works. Both Berea and Cleveland charge you. Cleveland may then hand back what Berea took, or part of it, or none of it. Everything on this page turns on which of those it does.
- One thing to keep in mind. Ohio does not require Cleveland to give any credit at all. That choice sits with the city, and cities revisit it. A vote in Cleveland could change what this commute to Berea costs you, with no change in the law itself.
- Watch for one more local tax. School district income tax is separate from what Cleveland and Berea charge, and plenty of Ohio districts levy it. Working elsewhere makes no difference to it, and no credit offsets it.
- 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 Cleveland and Berea. That is exactly why they are left out.
- Every dollar amount here uses a salary of sixty thousand a year. It is a benchmark, not a guess at what people in Cleveland earn, because nobody publishes average pay for single municipalities. Scale the figures to your own salary. The rates and the credit work the same way at any income, so the Berea conclusion holds.
- 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. Berea taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Cleveland taxes its residents on everything, and Cleveland then credits some, all or none of what Berea collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Cleveland rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Cleveland's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Cleveland 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 Cleveland can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Berea 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 Berea, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Cleveland 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 Cleveland and Berea, 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 Cleveland to Berea 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. Berea takes about 2% because you work there, Cleveland 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 commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
923 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: Berea on the basis of work location at about 2%, Cleveland 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 923 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.