Harrison Township to Dayton
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Harrison Township ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2.5%
Dayton, on income earned there
Home city charges
1%
Harrison Township, residents
Credit back
$0
nothing is credited
Cost of the commute
$1,500
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no creditHarrison Township credits nothing for tax paid to Dayton, so both bills stand in full. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Harrison Township 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
- Harrison Township gives its residents no credit for tax paid to another city. That single fact is the whole story of this commute. Work in Dayton and the same income is taxed twice, once where you earn it and once where you sleep. Together the two bills come to $2,100 a year. Bringing the job home would wipe out $1,500 of it.
- Plenty of towns feed Dayton. There are 11 of them in this data, and Harrison Township ranks 10 by worker count with roughly 644 making the trip. The size of a route tells you about traffic. It tells you nothing about the tax.
- Neither municipality yields on this pairing. Dayton taxes income earned inside its boundaries at about 2.5%, and Harrison Township taxes its residents' income wherever it is earned at about 1%. Harrison Township allows no credit for tax paid to another municipality, so both liabilities stand undiminished — $1,500 to the workplace and $600 to the residence, $2,100 together at the reference salary. Ohio's uniform framework for municipal income tax standardizes administration across the state but leaves the credit itself to local ordinance, which is why it can be set at nothing at all.
- Dayton is a major regional workplace, drawing recorded flows from 11 separate origins in this dataset. The route from Harrison Township ranks 10 among them by worker count, at roughly 644. Rank is not a proxy for tax outcome: every origin faces the same Dayton rate, and what differs between them is the home municipality's credit, so a smaller route can carry a considerably worse result than a larger one.
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
| Dayton takes, on income earned there | $1,500 |
|---|---|
| Harrison Township charges residents | $600 |
| Less the credit Harrison Township gives back | $0 |
| Total local tax | $2,100 |
| If you also lived in Dayton | $600 |
| Difference | $1,500 |
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. Dayton taxes what you earn there, Harrison Township taxes everything you earn, and then Harrison Township decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- One thing to keep in mind. Ohio does not require Harrison Township to give any credit at all. That choice sits with the city, and cities revisit it. A vote in Harrison Township could change what this commute to Dayton costs you, with no change in the law itself.
- Watch for one more local tax. School district income tax is separate from what Harrison Township and Dayton charge, and plenty of Ohio districts levy it. Working elsewhere makes no difference to it, and no credit offsets it.
- These figures are the local layer alone. Whatever Harrison Township and Dayton 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.
- Every dollar amount here uses a salary of sixty thousand a year. It is a benchmark, not a guess at what people in Harrison Township 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 Dayton 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. Dayton taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Harrison Township taxes its residents on everything, and Harrison Township then credits some, all or none of what Dayton collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Harrison Township rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Harrison Township's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Harrison Township 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 Harrison Township can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Dayton 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 Dayton, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Harrison Township 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 Harrison Township and Dayton, 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 Harrison Township to Dayton 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?
You are taxed by both, then given credit for one. Working in Dayton costs about 2.5%; living in Harrison Township costs about 1%, reduced by whatever share of the work tax the home city recognizes.
What does crossing this boundary actually cost me?
$1,500 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.
Why does my home town not credit the whole of what the other one took?
Full credit would mean Harrison Township collecting nothing from anyone who works out of town. Councils rarely do that, and the shortfall is what a commuter pays.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
644 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: Dayton on the basis of work location at about 2.5%, Harrison Township on residence at about 1%. 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 $1,500 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.
Why is the residence credit less than the full work-district tax?
Credit rates and ceilings are set by the residence municipality, not by state law. A full credit would forgo residence-based revenue from every outbound commuter, so credits are commonly partial or capped as a share of income. The uncredited remainder is the commuter's marginal cost.
What is the measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 644 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.