Hampden Township to Harrisburg
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CUMBERLAND to DAUPHIN County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.6%
Hampden Township, residents
Work rate
1%
Harrisburg, 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 taxHampden Township already charges its residents more than Harrisburg 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 Hampden Township pays about 1.6% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to Harrisburg. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $960 a year.
- More people take this route into Harrisburg than any other tracked here — 1,737 of them, out of 14 routes in the data. Hampden Township is where its workforce mostly lives.
- The Hampden Township to Harrisburg commute is tax-neutral. Hampden Township's resident rate of about 1.6% is not exceeded by Harrisburg'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 is the largest recorded inflow to Harrisburg, carrying 1,737 workers across 14 tracked routes. Hampden Township therefore functions as the principal residential catchment for this workplace in the available data.
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 Hampden Township | $960 |
|---|---|
| Working in Harrisburg | $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
- A common worry, answered. You do not pay Hampden Township and Harrisburg 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.
- Only one tax is on this page. It is the local earned income tax that Hampden Township and Harrisburg levy. State tax, federal tax and Social Security all still apply. All three are the same wherever in Pennsylvania you work.
- Sixty thousand a year is a benchmark. It is not a guess at what people in Hampden Township 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 Harrisburg.
- A postal address in Hampden Township 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 Harrisburg.
- Workers commuting from Hampden Township to Harrisburg 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.
- The scope here is the municipal earned income tax alone. State, federal and payroll taxes are unaffected by the choice between Hampden Township and Harrisburg and are therefore outside the model. A total tax position requires adding them; a comparison of the two locations does not.
- The reference salary is a stated benchmark, not an estimate of Hampden Township earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Harrisburg 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 Hampden Township. 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 Harrisburg.
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 1.6% 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?
Nothing extra. The tax is redirected rather than increased, so this particular crossing costs you no more than working in Hampden Township would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Hampden Township'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 a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
Yes — 1,737 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 1.6%) 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 basis for including this route?
Route volume is 1,737 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.