Cleveland to Independence
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Cleveland ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2%
Independence, 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 Independence 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
- Here is the good news. Working in Independence costs you nothing extra in local tax. Cleveland charges residents about 2.5%, and it credits back every dollar Independence collects from you. Either way your bill is $1,500 a year. What changes is which city keeps the money, not how much of it you hand over.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Cleveland runs out once Independence takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $300 a year of slack. A rate rise in Independence would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- Cleveland is the biggest single source of workers for Independence. Around 2,732 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 2,732 workers make this trip from Cleveland into Independence. 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. Independence 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 Independence 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 Independence only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Independence's levy currently sits below it with $300 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Independence 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 Independence. Of 3 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Cleveland supplies the most workers at approximately 2,732. 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 2,732 workers commuting from Cleveland to Independence, 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 Cleveland 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
| Independence 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 Independence | $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. Independence taxes what you earn there, Cleveland taxes everything you earn, and then Cleveland decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- 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 Independence costs you, with no change in the law itself.
- Ohio has a second local tax that is not on this page. Some school districts levy their own income tax. It depends on where you live, not on your job in Independence, and the credit from Cleveland does not touch it. If your district charges one, add it to everything here.
- Do not read this as your whole tax bill. It is the part that answers to the commute between Cleveland and Independence. State and federal tax carry on regardless, unchanged by which side of a city line your desk is on.
- 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 Independence 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. Independence taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Cleveland taxes its residents on everything, and Cleveland then credits some, all or none of what Independence 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 Independence 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 Independence, 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 Independence, 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 Independence 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?
Both places charge you, but the city you live in gives back some of what the other one took. Independence taxes you for working there at about 2%; Cleveland then charges its own about 2.5% and credits part of the first against it. Whether anything is left over depends on how generous that credit is.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Nothing extra. The tax is redirected rather than increased, so this particular crossing costs you no more than working in Cleveland would.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
It is. 2,732 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: Independence 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 basis for including this route?
Route volume is 2,732 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.