Carlisle Borough to South Middleton Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CUMBERLAND to CUMBERLAND County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.6%
Carlisle Borough, residents
Work rate
0.5%
South Middleton 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 taxCarlisle Borough already charges its residents more than South Middleton 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 Carlisle Borough pays about 1.6% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to South Middleton Township. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $960 a year.
- From Carlisle Borough, this is destination number 1 of 1 tracked. From South Middleton Township, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
- The Carlisle Borough to South Middleton Township commute is tax-neutral. Carlisle Borough's resident rate of about 1.6% is not exceeded by South Middleton 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.
- From the origin, South Middleton Township is Carlisle Borough's 1 destination of 1 recorded. From the destination, recorded inflows are too few to rank origins against one another, which is common for smaller workplaces in this dataset.
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 Carlisle Borough | $960 |
|---|---|
| Working in South Middleton 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 Carlisle Borough and South Middleton 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.
- 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 Carlisle Borough and South Middleton Township. 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 Carlisle Borough. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the South Middleton Township conclusion holds.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Carlisle Borough while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the South Middleton Township end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- The two rates applicable to a Carlisle Borough–South Middleton 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.
- 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 Carlisle Borough–South Middleton Township 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 Carlisle Borough. The flat structure of the local tax means the South Middleton Township comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Carlisle Borough address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Carlisle Borough rate. Second, Philadelphia administers its wage tax outside this framework, with its own resident and non-resident rates and its own credit arrangements, so any pairing touching it should be checked against the city's own schedule.
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. Carlisle Borough levies about 1.6% on residents and South Middleton Township levies about 0.5% 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?
On this route, nothing. You owe exactly what you would have owed working at home — the boundary is real on a map and invisible on your pay stub, which is not true of every pair of towns here.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. Carlisle Borough levies at least as much as South Middleton Township, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
718 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
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 0.5%); 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 718 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.