Cuyahoga Falls to Akron
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Cuyahoga Falls ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2.5%
Akron, on income earned there
Home city charges
2%
Cuyahoga Falls, residents
Credit back
$1,200
capped by the ceiling
Cost of the commute
$300
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
ceiling bindsCuyahoga Falls's credit stops at its ceiling, so the rest of its own tax still applies. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Cuyahoga Falls 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
- Cuyahoga Falls does credit you for the tax Akron takes. It just stops early. The credit cannot pass about 2% of your income, and Akron charges more than that, so it runs out before the bill does. Working there costs $300 a year more than working at home would. All in, local tax is $1,500.
- Of all the places people commute to Akron from, Cuyahoga Falls sends the most. The count is about 5,090 workers, top of 19 recorded routes. A rule that costs money on this pairing costs it at scale.
- Roughly 5,090 people travel from Cuyahoga Falls to Akron for work. Multiply one household's answer by that, and the credit rule stops being a detail.
- The credit here is real but bounded. Cuyahoga Falls allows residents about 100% of tax paid to another municipality, subject to a ceiling of about 2% of income, and on this pairing it is the ceiling rather than the share that binds. Akron withholds $1,500 at about 2.5%; Cuyahoga Falls returns $1,200 of that and collects the remainder of its own about 2% resident levy. The workplace accordingly costs $300 above the home-only position, against a total of $1,500.
- This is the largest recorded flow into Akron. Of 19 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Cuyahoga Falls supplies the most workers at approximately 5,090. 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 5,090 workers commuting from Cuyahoga Falls to Akron, 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 Cuyahoga Falls 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
| Akron takes, on income earned there | $1,500 |
|---|---|
| Cuyahoga Falls charges residents | $1,200 |
| Less the credit Cuyahoga Falls gives back | $1,200 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Akron | $1,200 |
| Difference | $300 |
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 Akron and Cuyahoga Falls charge you. Cuyahoga Falls may then hand back what Akron 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 Cuyahoga Falls, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Akron 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 Akron, and the credit from Cuyahoga Falls does not touch it. If your district charges one, add it to everything here.
- 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 Cuyahoga Falls and Akron. 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 Cuyahoga Falls 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 Akron 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. Akron taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Cuyahoga Falls taxes its residents on everything, and Cuyahoga Falls then credits some, all or none of what Akron collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Cuyahoga Falls rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Cuyahoga Falls's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Cuyahoga Falls 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 Cuyahoga Falls can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Akron 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 Akron, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Cuyahoga Falls 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 Cuyahoga Falls and Akron, 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 Cuyahoga Falls to Akron 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. Akron taxes you for working there at about 2.5%; Cuyahoga Falls then charges its own about 2% and credits part of the first against it. Whether anything is left over depends on how generous that credit is.
What does crossing this boundary actually cost me?
$300 a year more than if you worked where you live. It is not a commuting charge and it buys you nothing — it is what falls out of two jurisdictions both having a claim and only one of them yielding.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
Yes — 5,090 people make this exact journey, according to the federal employment survey that tracks where workers live against where they work. Routes below a volume floor are not published, so a page existing here means the commute is real and measured.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Akron on the basis of work location at about 2.5%, Cuyahoga Falls on residence at about 2%. 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.
What is the marginal local tax cost of this commute?
Marginal annual liability attributable to working outside the residence jurisdiction is $300 at the reference salary. This is a tax cost rather than a commuting expense and is not deductible as one. It scales with income and with the rate differential, not with distance traveled.
What is the basis for including this route?
Route volume is 5,090 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.