Kettering to Fairborn
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Kettering ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2%
Fairborn, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.25%
Kettering, 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 taxKettering credits only part of what Fairborn takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Kettering 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
- You can stop worrying about this one. Kettering credits everything Fairborn withholds, right up to its own rate of about 2.25%. Crossing the line to work adds nothing. Local income tax comes to $1,350 for the year, exactly as it would if the job were on your own street.
- This is closer than it looks. Kettering covers what Fairborn takes, but only up to a limit, and Fairborn is $150 a year short of it. Raise the work rate past that and the commute stops being free.
- Fairborn draws workers from 2 places in this data, and Kettering is 2 of them by size, with about 535 people. It is a short list. Smaller routes into the city exist below the counting threshold.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Fairborn withholds about 2% on income earned there, and Kettering, which levies about 2.25% on residents, credits that payment in full without reaching its own ceiling. Liability at the reference salary is therefore $1,350 — precisely what the same earnings would attract with no commute at all. What the arrangement alters is the division of revenue between Fairborn and Kettering, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Kettering credits tax paid to Fairborn only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Fairborn's levy currently sits below it with $150 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Fairborn 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.
- Fairborn records 2 qualifying commuting origins in this dataset, of which Kettering ranks 2 by worker count at approximately 535. A workplace of this size draws from a small enough set of origins that the comparison is indicative rather than statistical, and the published floor excludes an unknown tail of smaller flows.
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
| Fairborn takes, on income earned there | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Kettering charges residents | $1,350 |
| Less the credit Kettering gives back | $1,200 |
| Total local tax | $1,350 |
| If you also lived in Fairborn | $1,350 |
| 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 Fairborn and Kettering charge you. Kettering may then hand back what Fairborn took, or part of it, or none of it. Everything on this page turns on which of those it does.
- These figures rest on a local rule, not a state one. Kettering decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Fairborn. It is worth confirming the current position with the city or its collection agency, because this is the part most likely to have changed.
- Watch for one more local tax. School district income tax is separate from what Kettering and Fairborn charge, and plenty of Ohio districts levy it. Working elsewhere makes no difference to it, and no credit offsets it.
- 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 Kettering and Fairborn. 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 Kettering 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 Fairborn 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. Fairborn taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Kettering taxes its residents on everything, and Kettering then credits some, all or none of what Fairborn collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Kettering rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Kettering's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Kettering 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 Kettering can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Fairborn 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 Fairborn, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Kettering 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 Kettering and Fairborn, 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 Kettering to Fairborn 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 Fairborn costs about 2%; living in Kettering costs about 2.25%, reduced by whatever share of the work tax the home city recognizes.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Not a cent on this one. The crossing changes where the money is sent, not how much of it leaves, so your total matches a stay-at-home commute.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 535 workers. That affects how representative it is, not whether the tax arithmetic applies — the rules are the same on a quiet road as a busy one.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Fairborn on the basis of work location at about 2%, Kettering on residence at about 2.25%. 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 535 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.