Erie to Summit Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · ERIE to CRAWFORD County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.65%
Erie, residents
Work rate
1%
Summit Township, non-residents
You pay
1.65%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxErie already charges its residents more than Summit 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
- Live in Erie, work in Summit Township, and your local tax is your home rate: about 1.65%. That is $990 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- From Erie, this is destination number 2 of 5 tracked. From Summit Township, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
- Residence controls this pairing: Erie levies about 1.65% on residents, at or above Summit Township's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 1.65%, or $990 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.
- From the origin, Summit Township is Erie's 2 destination of 5 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 Erie | $990 |
|---|---|
| Working in Summit Township | $990 |
| 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
- One thing worth being clear about, because it catches people out. You are not charged by both places. Erie and Summit Township do not add their rates together. Pennsylvania picks the higher of the two, and that is what you pay. Adding them would roughly double the bill.
- Only one tax is on this page. It is the local earned income tax that Erie and Summit Township levy. State tax, federal tax and Social Security all still apply. All three are the same wherever in Pennsylvania you work.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for Erie. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Summit Township commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Erie while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the Summit Township end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Erie resident working in Summit Township is the higher of the two applicable rates, not their sum. The distinction is worth stating plainly because the additive reading is intuitive and would overstate the charge by roughly a factor of two. What is divided between the municipalities is the remittance, not the worker's liability.
- The scope here is the municipal earned income tax alone. State, federal and payroll taxes are unaffected by the choice between Erie and Summit Township and are therefore outside the model. A total tax position requires adding them; a comparison of the two locations does not.
- 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 Erie to Summit Township differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Erie address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Erie 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?
Only once, at the higher rate. Between Erie's about 1.65% and Summit Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
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?
The one where you live. Erie levies at least as much as Summit Township, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
Yes — 2,141 people make this exact journey, according to the federal employment survey that tracks where workers live against where they work. Routes below a volume floor are not published, so a page existing here means the commute is real and measured.
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 1.65%) 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 2,141 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.