Harrisburg to Lower Allen Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · DAUPHIN to CUMBERLAND County · tax year 2026
Home rate
2%
Harrisburg, residents
Work rate
1%
Lower Allen Township, non-residents
You pay
2%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxHarrisburg already charges its residents more than Lower Allen 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 Lower Allen Township costs you nothing extra. Harrisburg charges residents about 2%, at least as much as Lower Allen Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $1,200 a year, wherever you work.
- Nobody commuting into Lower Allen Township pays more local tax than someone coming from Harrisburg. There are 3 routes in this data and yours tops the list. That is worth knowing when comparing take-home with a colleague.
- For the Harrisburg to Lower Allen Township commute the residence governs. Harrisburg's resident rate of about 2% equals or exceeds Lower Allen Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 2%, or $1,200 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.
- This route ranks first for effective local rate across 3 inflows to Lower Allen Township tracked here. The differential is a function of residence alone; salary, employer and workplace are held constant across the comparison.
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 Harrisburg | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Working in Lower Allen Township | $1,200 |
| 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. Harrisburg and Lower Allen 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 Harrisburg or Lower Allen 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 Harrisburg 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 Lower Allen Township.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Harrisburg while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the Lower Allen 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 Harrisburg resident working in Lower Allen 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 Harrisburg to Lower Allen 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 Harrisburg earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Lower Allen Township commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Harrisburg address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Harrisburg 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 Harrisburg's about 2% and Lower Allen Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
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?
Harrisburg'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?
589 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 2%) 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 589 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.