Columbus to London
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Columbus ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1.5%
London, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Columbus, residents
Credit back
$900
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no extra local taxColumbus credits only part of what London takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Columbus 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. Columbus gives full credit for the tax London 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 Columbus runs out once London takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $600 a year of slack. A rate rise in London would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- No route sends more people into London than this one. About 800 workers come from Columbus, putting it top of 2 recorded origins. Whatever the tax rule does here, it does to a lot of households at once.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. London withholds about 1.5% on income earned there, and Columbus, 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 London and Columbus, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Columbus credits tax paid to London only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and London's levy currently sits below it with $600 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were London 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 London. Of 2 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Columbus supplies the most workers at approximately 800. 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.
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
| London takes, on income earned there | $900 |
|---|---|
| Columbus charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Columbus gives back | $900 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in London | $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 London and Columbus charge you. Columbus may then hand back what London took, or part of it, or none of it. Everything on this page turns on which of those it does.
- The credit rule on this page belongs to Columbus, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in London or at the state level for these numbers to move. Check the current rule before you rely on it.
- 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 London, and the credit from Columbus does not touch it. If your district charges one, add it to everything here.
- These figures are the local layer alone. Whatever Columbus and London 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 Columbus. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in London.
- 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. London taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Columbus taxes its residents on everything, and Columbus then credits some, all or none of what London collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Columbus rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Columbus's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Columbus 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 Columbus can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in London 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 London, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Columbus 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 Columbus and London, 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 Columbus to London 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. London taxes you for working there at about 1.5%; Columbus 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?
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?
800 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: London on the basis of work location at about 1.5%, Columbus 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 800 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.