Lorain to Elyria
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Lorain ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2.25%
Elyria, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Lorain, residents
Credit back
$1,350
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 Elyria 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
- Some Ohio commutes cost you real money. This one does not. Lorain gives full credit for the tax Elyria takes out of your pay, so the two settle down to the same bill you would owe at home. On sixty thousand that is $1,500 for the year. The commute shifts money between city halls and leaves your total alone.
- There is room here, and it is measurable. Elyria could take another $150 a year from you before Lorain's credit ran out. Until then the two cities settle it between themselves and you pay what you would have paid at home.
- No route sends more people into Elyria than this one. About 2,873 workers come from Lorain, putting it top of 3 recorded origins. Whatever the tax rule does here, it does to a lot of households at once.
- This is a well-traveled road. About 2,873 people go from Lorain to work in Elyria. That is a lot of households meeting the same rule at the same time.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Elyria withholds about 2.25% 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 Elyria 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 Elyria only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Elyria's levy currently sits below it with $150 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Elyria 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.
- This is the largest recorded flow into Elyria. Of 3 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Lorain supplies the most workers at approximately 2,873. 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 2,873 workers commuting from Lorain to Elyria, 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 Lorain 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
| Elyria takes, on income earned there | $1,350 |
|---|---|
| Lorain charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Lorain gives back | $1,350 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Elyria | $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
- Here is the shape of it, because the arithmetic is easy to get wrong. You are taxed by both cities. What happens next is up to Lorain: it may credit all of what Elyria took, some of it, or none at all. That choice belongs to the city rather than to the state, which is why identical salaries in neighboring towns land so differently.
- One thing to keep in mind. Ohio does not require Lorain to give any credit at all. That choice sits with the city, and cities revisit it. A vote in Lorain could change what this commute to Elyria costs you, with no change in the law itself.
- 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 Elyria, and the credit from Lorain does not touch it. If your district charges one, add it to everything here.
- Do not read this as your whole tax bill. It is the part that answers to the commute between Lorain and Elyria. 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 Lorain. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in Elyria.
- 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. Elyria taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Lorain taxes its residents on everything, and Lorain then credits some, all or none of what Elyria 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 Elyria 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 Elyria, 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 Elyria, 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 Elyria 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. Elyria taxes you for working there at about 2.25%; 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?
It is. 2,873 workers travel this pair, per the federal origin-destination survey; smaller routes fall below the publication floor and get no page.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Elyria on the basis of work location at about 2.25%, 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 2,873 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.