Medina Township to Cleveland
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Medina Township ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2.5%
Cleveland, on income earned there
Home city charges
1.25%
Medina Township, residents
Credit back
$375
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$1,125
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
partial creditMedina Township credits only part of what Cleveland takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Medina 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
- Medina Township gives back some of what Cleveland takes, but not all of it. The credit covers about 25% of the work city's tax and no more. Whatever is left over, you pay twice. That comes to $1,125 a year beyond what living and working in Medina Township would have cost.
- Cleveland pulls workers in from 66 different places, and this route from Medina Township ranks 65 of them by size. About 509 people travel it. Being busier does not make it cheaper. The rate you pay depends on your home city, not on how crowded your road is.
- Medina Township credits only part of what its residents pay elsewhere. Its ordinance allows about 25% of tax paid to another municipality, and on this pairing that share, rather than the income ceiling, is what limits the relief. Against $1,500 withheld by Cleveland, the credit returns $375, leaving Medina Township to collect the balance of its about 1.25% resident levy. The workplace accounts for $1,125; the year's local total is $1,875.
- Cleveland is a major regional workplace, drawing recorded flows from 66 separate origins in this dataset. The route from Medina Township ranks 65 among them by worker count, at roughly 509. Rank is not a proxy for tax outcome: every origin faces the same Cleveland 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
| Cleveland takes, on income earned there | $1,500 |
|---|---|
| Medina Township charges residents | $750 |
| Less the credit Medina Township gives back | $375 |
| Total local tax | $1,875 |
| If you also lived in Cleveland | $750 |
| Difference | $1,125 |
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. Cleveland taxes what you earn there, Medina Township taxes everything you earn, and then Medina Township decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- These figures rest on a local rule, not a state one. Medina Township decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Cleveland. 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 Medina Township and Cleveland charge, and plenty of Ohio districts levy it. Working elsewhere makes no difference to it, and no credit offsets it.
- Do not read this as your whole tax bill. It is the part that answers to the commute between Medina Township and Cleveland. State and federal tax carry on regardless, unchanged by which side of a city line your desk is on.
- Every dollar amount here uses a salary of sixty thousand a year. It is a benchmark, not a guess at what people in Medina 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 Cleveland 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. Cleveland taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Medina Township taxes its residents on everything, and Medina Township then credits some, all or none of what Cleveland collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Medina Township rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Medina Township's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Medina 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 Medina Township can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Cleveland 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 Cleveland, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Medina 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 Medina Township and Cleveland, 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 Medina Township to Cleveland 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 Cleveland costs about 2.5%; living in Medina Township costs about 1.25%, reduced by whatever share of the work tax the home city recognizes.
What does crossing this boundary actually cost me?
$1,125 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 Medina 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?
509 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
How does a resident credit allocate liability between two municipalities?
Both jurisdictions assert a claim: Cleveland on the basis of work location at about 2.5%, Medina Township on residence at about 1.25%. 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.
What is the marginal local tax cost of this commute?
Marginal annual liability attributable to working outside the residence jurisdiction is $1,125 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 509 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.