Hampden Township to Silver Spring Township

Everyday commuter cars and a bus crossing a steel river bridge beside an American city.

Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CUMBERLAND to CUMBERLAND County · tax year 2026

Home rate

1.6%

Hampden Township, residents

Work rate

1%

Silver Spring 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 tax
$
Local tax total
$960
one rate, not two, for the year
Because of the commute
$0
above working in Hampden Township
Slack before it costs
$360
Silver Spring Township could take this much more first

Hampden Township already charges its residents more than Silver Spring 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 Hampden Township, work in Silver Spring Township, and your local tax is your home rate: about 1.6%. That is $960 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
  • From Hampden Township, this is destination number 2 of 5 tracked. From Silver Spring Township, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
  • Residence controls this pairing: Hampden Township levies about 1.6% on residents, at or above Silver Spring Township's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 1.6%, or $960 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, Silver Spring Township is Hampden Township'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

Hampden Township to Silver Spring Township rate comparison
If you worked in Hampden Township$960
Working in Silver Spring 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

  • One thing worth being clear about, because it catches people out. You are not charged by both places. Hampden Township and Silver Spring 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.
  • This covers the local tax only. Whatever Hampden Township or Silver Spring 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 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 Silver Spring Township.
  • 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 Silver Spring Township.
  • Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Hampden Township resident working in Silver Spring 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.
  • Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Hampden Township to Silver Spring 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 Hampden Township earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Silver Spring 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 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 Silver Spring Township.

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 Hampden Township's about 1.6% and Silver Spring 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 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 commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?

972 people travel it. Volume decides whether a route gets published at all, never what the tax on it 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 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 972 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.