Mentor to Mayfield Heights
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Mentor ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1.5%
Mayfield Heights, on income earned there
Home city charges
2%
Mentor, 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 taxMentor credits only part of what Mayfield Heights takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Mentor 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. Mentor credits everything Mayfield Heights withholds, right up to its own rate of about 2%. Crossing the line to work adds nothing. Local income tax comes to $1,200 for the year, exactly as it would if the job were on your own street.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Mentor runs out once Mayfield Heights takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $300 a year of slack. A rate rise in Mayfield Heights would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- Mayfield Heights draws workers from 2 places in this data, and Mentor is 2 of them by size, with about 552 people. It is a short list. Smaller routes into the city exist below the counting threshold.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Mayfield Heights withholds about 1.5% on income earned there, and Mentor, which levies about 2% on residents, credits that payment in full without reaching its own ceiling. Liability at the reference salary is therefore $1,200 — precisely what the same earnings would attract with no commute at all. What the arrangement alters is the division of revenue between Mayfield Heights and Mentor, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Mentor credits tax paid to Mayfield Heights only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Mayfield Heights's levy currently sits below it with $300 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Mayfield Heights 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.
- Mayfield Heights records 2 qualifying commuting origins in this dataset, of which Mentor ranks 2 by worker count at approximately 552. 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
| Mayfield Heights takes, on income earned there | $900 |
|---|---|
| Mentor charges residents | $1,200 |
| Less the credit Mentor gives back | $900 |
| Total local tax | $1,200 |
| If you also lived in Mayfield Heights | $1,200 |
| 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
- 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. Mayfield Heights taxes what you earn there, Mentor taxes everything you earn, and then Mentor decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- The credit rule on this page belongs to Mentor, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Mayfield Heights or at the state level for these numbers to move. Check the current rule before you rely on it.
- This page covers city income tax only. Your school district may charge its own on top, and many in Ohio do. That one follows your address in Mentor rather than your workplace in Mayfield Heights, and it is not credited against anything.
- Do not read this as your whole tax bill. It is the part that answers to the commute between Mentor and Mayfield Heights. State and federal tax carry on regardless, unchanged by which side of a city line your desk is on.
- The dollar figures rest on one assumed salary, sixty thousand. Double your pay and they double. Halve it and they halve. What stays put is the relationship between what Mayfield Heights charges and what Mentor gives back, which is the part worth carrying away.
- 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. Mayfield Heights taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Mentor taxes its residents on everything, and Mentor then credits some, all or none of what Mayfield Heights collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Mentor rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Mentor's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Mentor 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 Mentor can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Mayfield Heights 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 Mayfield Heights, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Mentor 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 Mentor and Mayfield Heights, 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 Mentor to Mayfield Heights 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 Mayfield Heights costs about 1.5%; living in Mentor costs about 2%, 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?
552 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: Mayfield Heights on the basis of work location at about 1.5%, Mentor on residence at about 2%. 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 552 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.