Upper Arlington to Dublin
Ohio municipal income tax, Chapter 718 framework · credit set by Upper Arlington ordinance · tax year 2026
Work city takes
2%
Dublin, on income earned there
Home city charges
2.5%
Upper Arlington, residents
Credit back
$1,200
a share of the work tax
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above working at home
What it costs you
no extra local taxUpper Arlington credits only part of what Dublin takes, so the remainder is taxed twice. Solid is what you pay; the faded part of the Upper Arlington 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. Upper Arlington credits everything Dublin 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.
- Worth watching rather than worrying about. The credit from Upper Arlington runs out once Dublin takes more than the ceiling allows, and today there is $300 a year of slack. A rate rise in Dublin would eat into that first, and into your pay after.
- This data records 9 commutes into Dublin, and the one from Upper Arlington ranks 6, carrying roughly 804 workers. That is a handful of routes rather than a full map of who works there.
- This pairing is neutral to the worker. Dublin withholds about 2% on income earned there, and Upper Arlington, 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 Dublin and Upper Arlington, not the sum leaving the worker's pay.
- The margin is worth knowing, because it is not large. Upper Arlington credits tax paid to Dublin only up to a ceiling set as a share of income, and Dublin's levy currently sits below it with $300 of annual room to spare at the reference salary. Were Dublin 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.
- Dublin records 9 qualifying commuting origins in this dataset, of which Upper Arlington ranks 6 by worker count at approximately 804. 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
| Dublin takes, on income earned there | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Upper Arlington charges residents | $1,500 |
| Less the credit Upper Arlington gives back | $1,200 |
| Total local tax | $1,500 |
| If you also lived in Dublin | $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. Dublin taxes what you earn there, Upper Arlington taxes everything you earn, and then Upper Arlington decides how much of the first bill to give back.
- The credit rule on this page belongs to Upper Arlington, not to the state. Its council sets it and its council can change it. Nothing needs to happen in Dublin 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 Upper Arlington rather than your workplace in Dublin, and it is not credited against anything.
- These figures are the local layer alone. Whatever Upper Arlington and Dublin 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 Dublin charges and what Upper Arlington 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. Dublin taxes what is earned within its boundaries, Upper Arlington taxes its residents on everything, and Upper Arlington then credits some, all or none of what Dublin collected. The credit is the entire mechanism, and it is set by Upper Arlington rather than by the state.
- The credit rule modeled here is Upper Arlington's own, adopted by ordinance and amendable by Upper Arlington 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 Upper Arlington can therefore change every figure on this page without anything altering in Dublin 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 Dublin, and no municipal credit applies to it. A resident of Upper Arlington 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 Upper Arlington and Dublin, 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 Upper Arlington to Dublin 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. Dublin taxes you for working there at about 2%; Upper Arlington 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 Upper Arlington would.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
804 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: Dublin on the basis of work location at about 2%, Upper Arlington 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 804 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.