Easton to Palmer Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · NORTHAMPTON to NORTHAMPTON County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.95%
Easton, residents
Work rate
1%
Palmer Township, non-residents
You pay
1.95%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxEaston already charges its residents more than Palmer 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
- Good news for this commute. Working in Palmer Township costs you nothing extra. Easton charges residents about 1.95%, at least as much as Palmer Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $1,170 a year, wherever you work.
- Few other routes into Palmer Township appear in this data, so there is little to compare at that end. The other direction has plenty. Easton sends workers to 2 places, and this is number 2 by size.
- For the Easton to Palmer Township commute the residence governs. Easton's resident rate of about 1.95% equals or exceeds Palmer Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1.95%, or $1,170 at the reference salary. The workplace adds nothing; the entire amount is remitted to the residence. This is the majority outcome and the one most commuters need confirmed.
- Palmer Township draws few recorded inflows, so cross-origin comparison is thin at the destination end. The origin is better covered: Easton appears as the home municipality for 2 tracked destinations, of which this ranks 2 by worker count.
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 Easton | $1,170 |
|---|---|
| Working in Palmer Township | $1,170 |
| 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
- A common worry, answered. You do not pay Easton and Palmer Township both. Only one rate applies, the higher of the two. The two councils then sort out between themselves who gets what, and your bill is unaffected.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Easton or Palmer Township takes sits on top of state tax, federal tax and Social Security. Those three do not care where you live or work.
- Sixty thousand a year is a benchmark. It is not a guess at what people in Easton earn. No published wage figure exists for single municipalities. The rate is the durable part of this page. The dollars scale straight up and down with whatever you earn in Palmer Township.
- A postal address in Easton 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 Palmer Township.
- Workers commuting from Easton to Palmer Township are subject to one rate, not two. The statute directs the employer to withhold the greater of the resident and non-resident rates; the allocation between the two taxing bodies is a remittance mechanic invisible to the employee. Treating the two rates as cumulative is the most common misreading of the statute.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Easton to Palmer 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.
- The reference salary is a stated benchmark, not an estimate of Easton earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Palmer Township commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- 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 Easton. 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 Palmer Township.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
The rates compete rather than stack. about 1.95% where you live, about 1% where you work, and you pay the greater of the two.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Not a cent on this one. The crossing changes where the money is sent, not how much of it leaves, so your total matches a stay-at-home commute.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Easton's, because it is the higher of the two. Where you live sets the rate on this route, so working across the boundary does not raise what you owe — it only changes who collects it.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
595 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 1.95%) 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 595 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.