Allentown to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LEHIGH to LEHIGH County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.98%
Allentown, residents
Work rate
1%
Bethlehem, non-residents
You pay
1.98%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxAllentown already charges its residents more than Bethlehem charges commuters, so the home rate governs and the job adds nothing at all. You pay the solid bar only — Pennsylvania charges the higher of the two rates, never their sum. Local earned income tax only; state, federal and payroll tax apply on top.
What this commute actually costs
- Live in Allentown, work in Bethlehem, and your local tax is your home rate: about 1.98%. That is $1,185 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- Out of 12 routes into Bethlehem in this data, yours is the busiest. About 4,349 people make the trip from Allentown, more than from anywhere else tracked.
- Around 4,349 people make this trip from Allentown into Bethlehem for work. It is a well-worn route. That is part of why the tax treatment is worth setting out.
- Residence controls this pairing: Allentown levies about 1.98% on residents, at or above Bethlehem's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 1.98%, or $1,185 at the reference salary. Employers still withhold against the work location's collector, but the amount is unchanged and the residence is the ultimate recipient.
- Among 12 inflows to Bethlehem, the Allentown route is the largest at 4,349 workers. Concentration of this kind means the rate outcome described above applies to a substantial share of the workplace's staff rather than to a scattered few.
- The Allentown to Bethlehem flow carries approximately 4,349 workers according to Census LODES origin-destination statistics — a substantial share of either municipality's workforce, and enough that the outcome here has aggregate fiscal consequence for both.
Where the money goes
A $75,000 salary
- Federal income tax$7,670
- Social Security and Medicare$5,738
- State income tax$2,303
- Yours$59,290
| Federal income tax10.23% | $7,670 |
|---|---|
| Social Security and Medicare7.65% | $5,738 |
| State income tax3.07% | $2,303 |
| Yours79.05% | $59,290 |
The arithmetic, side by side
| If you worked in Allentown | $1,185 |
|---|---|
| Working in Bethlehem | $1,185 |
| Difference | $0 |
On a reference salary of $60,000 a year. The local tax is flat, so every figure scales with your own pay.
What this page does not cover
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for Allentown and Bethlehem are not stacked. Pennsylvania takes the larger one. What is collected then gets divided between the two municipalities. That division does not change what comes out of your pay.
- Everything here is the local earned income tax and nothing else. State income tax applies on top, as do federal tax and Social Security. None of those change when you cross a municipal line between Allentown and Bethlehem. This page is about the layer that does.
- All the dollar amounts rest on one assumed salary. It is stated rather than measured, because nobody publishes average pay for Allentown. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the Bethlehem conclusion holds.
- A postal address in Allentown does not prove which municipality taxes you. Boundaries and postcodes disagree often enough here that the state publishes a lookup. Philadelphia is a special case too. Its wage tax sits outside the rules that govern Bethlehem.
- The two rates applicable to a Allentown–Bethlehem commute are alternatives, not addends. The statute fixes the employee's liability at the greater of them and then apportions the proceeds, with the residence receiving up to its own rate and the excess passing to the work location. The apportionment is fiscally significant to the municipalities and immaterial to the worker.
- Figures cover the local earned income tax exclusively. Pennsylvania's flat state income tax, federal income tax and FICA apply in addition and are invariant to the Allentown–Bethlehem municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- Monetary figures derive from a single stated salary assumption; no published wage series covers Pennsylvania municipalities such as Allentown. The flat structure of the local tax means the Bethlehem comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- Municipal taxing jurisdiction is determined by boundary rather than by postal address, and the two diverge frequently enough in Pennsylvania that the DCED lookup should be treated as authoritative for Allentown. Philadelphia is additionally outside this regime, administering its own wage tax on residents and non-residents under separate authority, so it does not follow the treatment described for Bethlehem.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
No — you pay the higher of the two rates and never the sum. Allentown levies about 1.98% on residents and Bethlehem levies about 1% on people who work there; whichever is larger is what you owe, and your employer withholds it.
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 Allentown would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. Allentown levies at least as much as Bethlehem, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
4,349 workers make it. The pairing comes from federal commuting data rather than from guesswork, and thin routes are excluded rather than estimated.
How does Pennsylvania's local earned income tax law allocate liability between two districts?
Pennsylvania's local earned income tax law assigns the higher of the residence rate (about 1.98%) and the non-resident work rate (about 1%); liabilities are never summed. The employer withholds at the governing rate and remits through the work district's collector, which then distributes to the residence district.
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.
Which district's rate governs on this route?
The residence rate equals or exceeds the work district's non-resident rate and therefore governs. Working outside the residence district does not increase employee liability on this route; it affects only inter-district distribution.
What is the basis for including this route?
Route volume is 4,349 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.