Butler Township to Hazle Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · ADAMS to LUZERNE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.6%
Butler Township, residents
Work rate
1%
Hazle Township, non-residents
You pay
1.6%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxButler Township already charges its residents more than Hazle Township 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
- Nothing changes for this commute. A resident of Butler Township pays about 1.6% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to Hazle Township. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $960 a year.
- Roughly 501 people commute from Butler Township to Hazle Township, which makes this route number 3 out of 3 tracked into that workplace. A normal-sized flow rather than a dominant one.
- The Butler Township to Hazle Township commute is tax-neutral. Butler Township's resident rate of about 1.6% is not exceeded by Hazle Township's non-resident rate, so under the state's rule the resident rate applies and the effective figure is about 1.6% — $960 annually at the reference salary. Withholding is remitted to the residence in full and the work location receives no share.
- This flow carries 501 workers, ranking 3 among 3 recorded routes into Hazle Township and 2 of 2 destinations recorded for Butler Township. The rate outcome above therefore applies to a meaningful but not dominant share of that workplace's inbound commuters.
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 Butler Township | $960 |
|---|---|
| Working in Hazle Township | $960 |
| 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 Butler Township and Hazle Township 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.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Butler Township or Hazle Township takes sits on top of state tax, federal tax and Social Security. Those three do not care where you live or work.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for Butler Township. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Hazle Township commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- Check two things. A Butler Township postal address may not match your taxing municipality. That catches out plenty of people near a boundary, and the state has an official lookup for it. Philadelphia is the other one to watch. It runs its wage tax separately, outside the pattern used for Hazle Township.
- The two rates applicable to a Butler Township–Hazle Township 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.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Butler Township to Hazle Township commute. State and federal liabilities are constant across Pennsylvania municipalities and are excluded so the municipal differential is visible rather than buried inside a larger total.
- Dollar amounts are computed against a stated reference salary rather than a municipal wage average, which does not exist for Pennsylvania municipalities in any published source. Because the local tax is flat, the rate is invariant to income and the figures scale linearly — the Butler Township to Hazle Township differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- Verify two things before relying on these figures. Municipal taxing boundaries do not track postal geography, so the applicable jurisdiction for a Butler Township address should be confirmed through the state's official lookup. Separately, Philadelphia's wage tax operates outside this framework and is not governed by the greater-of rule applied here, which affects any pairing involving the city rather than Hazle Township generally.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
Only once, at the higher rate. Between Butler Township's about 1.6% and Hazle Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
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 Butler Township would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Butler Township sets it. Your residence rate is the larger, so it governs regardless of where the job is.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 501 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 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 1.6%) 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 501 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.