Lorain to Amherst
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Lorain ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1.5%
Amherst, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Lorain, 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 taxLorain credits only part of what Amherst takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Lorain 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 Amherst costs you nothing extra in local tax. Lorain charges residents about 2.5%, and it credits back every dollar Amherst 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.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Lorain runs out once Amherst takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $600 a year of slack. A rate rise in Amherst would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- This is the only route into Amherst large enough to show up in the data. About 1,241 people travel it from Lorain. Other people commute there too. Their numbers are simply too small to be counted separately.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Amherst withholds about 1.5% on income earned there, and Lorain, 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 Amherst and Lorain, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Lorain credits tax paid to Amherst only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Amherst's levy currently sits below it with $600 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Amherst 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 Amherst draws a single recorded commuting flow of qualifying size — the one from Lorain, carrying roughly 1,241 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
| Amherst takes, on income earned there | $900 |
|---|---|
| Lorain charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Lorain gives back | $900 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Amherst | $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 Amherst and Lorain charge you. Lorain may then hand back what Amherst 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. Lorain decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Amherst. 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 Lorain and Amherst 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 Lorain and Amherst. That is exactly why they are left out.
- 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 Lorain. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in Amherst.
- 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. Amherst taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Lorain taxes its residents on everything, and Lorain then credits some, all or none of what Amherst collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Lorain rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Lorain's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Lorain 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 Lorain can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Amherst 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 Amherst, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Lorain 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 Lorain and Amherst, 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 Lorain to Amherst 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. Amherst taxes you for working there at about 1.5%; Lorain 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 Lorain would.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
Yes — 1,241 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: Amherst on the basis of work location at about 1.5%, Lorain 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 basis for including this route?
Route volume is 1,241 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.