Riverside to Kettering
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Riverside ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2.25%
Kettering, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Riverside, 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 taxRiverside credits only part of what Kettering takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Riverside 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. Riverside gives full credit for the tax Kettering 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.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Riverside runs out once Kettering takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $150 a year of slack. A rate rise in Kettering would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- This route from Riverside is 3 of 3 recorded commutes into Kettering, with around 649 people on it. Treat the ranking loosely. Only flows above a certain size are published at all.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Kettering withholds about 2.25% on income earned there, and Riverside, 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 Kettering and Riverside, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Riverside credits tax paid to Kettering only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Kettering's levy currently sits below it with $150 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Kettering 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.
- Kettering records 3 qualifying commuting origins in this dataset, of which Riverside ranks 3 by worker count at approximately 649. 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
| Kettering takes, on income earned there | $1,350 |
|---|---|
| Riverside charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Riverside gives back | $1,350 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Kettering | $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 Kettering and Riverside charge you. Riverside may then hand back what Kettering 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. Riverside decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Kettering. 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 Riverside and Kettering 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 Riverside and Kettering. 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 Riverside. The percentages are the durable part of this page, and they do not shift with what you earn in Kettering.
- 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. Kettering taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Riverside taxes its residents on everything, and Riverside then credits some, all or none of what Kettering collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Riverside rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Riverside's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Riverside 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 Riverside can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Kettering 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 Kettering, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Riverside 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 Riverside and Kettering, 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 Riverside to Kettering 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 Kettering costs about 2.25%; living in Riverside costs about 2.5%, 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?
649 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: Kettering on the basis of work location at about 2.25%, Riverside 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 649 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.