Toledo to Sylvania
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Toledo ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
1.5%
Sylvania, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Toledo, 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 taxToledo credits only part of what Sylvania takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Toledo 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. Toledo credits everything Sylvania withholds, right up to its own rate of about 2.5%. Crossing the line to work adds nothing. Local income tax comes to $1,500 for the year, exactly as it would if the job were on your own street.
- There is room here, and it is measurable. Sylvania could take another $600 a year from you before Toledo's credit ran out. Until then the two cities settle it between themselves and you pay what you would have paid at home.
- Toledo is the biggest single source of workers for Sylvania. Around 3,260 people make the trip, ahead of every other origin the data records, 2 in all. That is why this pairing is worth setting out rather than leaving people to work out alone.
- Around 3,260 workers make this trip from Toledo into Sylvania. It is one of the busier commutes in the state, which is part of why it gets a page of its own.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Sylvania withholds about 1.5% on income earned there, and Toledo, 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 Sylvania and Toledo, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Toledo credits tax paid to Sylvania only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Sylvania's levy currently sits below it with $600 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Sylvania 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 Sylvania. Of 2 origins feeding that workplace in this dataset, Toledo supplies the most workers at approximately 3,260. 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 3,260 workers commuting from Toledo to Sylvania, 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 Toledo 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
| Sylvania takes, on income earned there | $900 |
|---|---|
| Toledo charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Toledo gives back | $900 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Sylvania | $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
- 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. Sylvania taxes what you earn there, Toledo taxes everything you earn, and then Toledo decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- These figures rest on a local rule, not a state one. Toledo decides how much credit to give for tax already paid to Sylvania. 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 Toledo and Sylvania 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 Toledo and Sylvania. 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 Toledo 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 Sylvania 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. Sylvania taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Toledo taxes its residents on everything, and Toledo then credits some, all or none of what Sylvania collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Toledo rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Toledo's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Toledo 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 Toledo can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Sylvania 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 Sylvania, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Toledo 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 Toledo and Sylvania, 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 Toledo to Sylvania 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. Sylvania taxes you for working there at about 1.5%; Toledo 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 Toledo would.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
It is. 3,260 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: Sylvania on the basis of work location at about 1.5%, Toledo 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 3,260 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.