Dayton to Butler Township
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Dayton ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1%
Butler Township, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Dayton, 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 taxDayton credits only part of what Butler Township takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Dayton 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 Butler Township costs you nothing extra in local tax. Dayton charges residents about 2.5%, and it credits back every dollar Butler Township 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.
- This is closer than it looks. Dayton covers what Butler Township takes, but only up to a limit, and Butler Township is $900 a year short of it. Raise the work rate past that and the commute stops being free.
- Butler Township shows just one commuting route in this data, and it starts in Dayton. Roughly 982 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. Butler Township withholds about 1% on income earned there, and Dayton, 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 Butler Township and Dayton, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Dayton credits tax paid to Butler Township only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Butler Township's levy currently sits below it with $900 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Butler Township 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 Butler Township draws a single recorded commuting flow of qualifying size — the one from Dayton, carrying roughly 982 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
| Butler Township takes, on income earned there | $600 |
|---|---|
| Dayton charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Dayton gives back | $600 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Butler Township | $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 Butler Township and Dayton charge you. Dayton may then hand back what Butler Township 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 Dayton, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Butler Township or at the state level for these numbers to move. Check the current rule before you rely on it.
- 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 Dayton rather than your workplace in Butler Township, and it is not credited against anything.
- Do not read this as your whole tax bill. It is the part that answers to the commute between Dayton and Butler Township. State and federal tax carry on regardless, unchanged by which side of a city line your desk is on.
- 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 Dayton. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in Butler Township.
- 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. Butler Township taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Dayton taxes its residents on everything, and Dayton then credits some, all or none of what Butler Township collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Dayton rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Dayton's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Dayton 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 Dayton can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Butler Township 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 Butler Township, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Dayton 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 Dayton and Butler Township, 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 Dayton to Butler Township 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. Butler Township taxes you for working there at about 1%; Dayton 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 Dayton would.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
982 people travel it. Volume decides whether a route gets published at all, never what the tax on it is.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Butler Township on the basis of work location at about 1%, Dayton 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 982 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.