Piqua to Sidney
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Piqua ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1.75%
Sidney, on income earned there
Home city charges
2%
Piqua, residents
Credit back
$1,050
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no extra local taxPiqua credits only part of what Sidney takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Piqua 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. Piqua gives full credit for the tax Sidney takes out of your pay, so the two settle down to the same bill you would owe at home. On sixty thousand that is $1,200 for the year. The commute shifts money between city halls and leaves your total alone.
- This is closer than it looks. Piqua covers what Sidney takes, but only up to a limit, and Sidney is $150 a year short of it. Raise the work rate past that and the commute stops being free.
- No other commute into Sidney is big enough to appear here, so there is nothing to rank this one against. The route from Piqua carries around 701 workers. Smaller streams get folded away by the counting rules rather than by the map.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Sidney withholds about 1.75% on income earned there, and Piqua, 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 Sidney and Piqua, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Piqua credits tax paid to Sidney only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Sidney's levy currently sits below it with $150 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Sidney 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 Sidney draws a single recorded commuting flow of qualifying size — the one from Piqua, carrying roughly 701 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
| Sidney takes, on income earned there | $1,050 |
|---|---|
| Piqua charges residents | $1,200 |
| Less the credit Piqua gives back | $1,050 |
| Total local tax | $1,200 |
| If you also lived in Sidney | $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. Sidney taxes what you earn there, Piqua taxes everything you earn, and then Piqua decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- The credit rule on this page belongs to Piqua, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Sidney 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 Piqua rather than your workplace in Sidney, and it is not credited against anything.
- These figures are the local layer alone. Whatever Piqua and Sidney take sits on top of state, federal and payroll tax. Those three are the same wherever in Ohio you work, so putting them in would bury the difference this page is about.
- 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 Sidney charges and what Piqua 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. Sidney taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Piqua taxes its residents on everything, and Piqua then credits some, all or none of what Sidney collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Piqua rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Piqua's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Piqua 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 Piqua can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Sidney 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 Sidney, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Piqua 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 Piqua and Sidney, 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 Piqua to Sidney 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?
Two claims, one partly canceled. Sidney takes about 1.75% because you work there, Piqua charges about 2% because you live there, and the home city credits some of the first against the second.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
On this route, nothing. You owe exactly what you would have owed working at home — the boundary is real on a map and invisible on your pay stub, which is not true of every pair of towns here.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 701 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: Sidney on the basis of work location at about 1.75%, Piqua 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 701 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.