Lancaster to East Hempfield Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LANCASTER to LANCASTER County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.6%
Lancaster, residents
Work rate
1%
East Hempfield 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 taxLancaster already charges its residents more than East Hempfield 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 Lancaster, work in East Hempfield 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.
- Among everyone commuting into East Hempfield Township, you are at the top for local tax. This dataset tracks 5 routes into East Hempfield Township, and Lancaster carries the highest rate of any of them. Your neighbors on the same journey from elsewhere pay less than you do.
- Residence controls this pairing: Lancaster levies about 1.6% on residents, at or above East Hempfield 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.
- Lancaster carries the highest effective local rate across 5 commuting routes into East Hempfield Township recorded here. Two workers doing the same job at the same employer therefore face different local liabilities depending purely on residence, and this route is the most expensive of the set.
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 Lancaster | $960 |
|---|---|
| Working in East Hempfield 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
- A common worry, answered. You do not pay Lancaster and East Hempfield 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 Lancaster or East Hempfield Township takes sits on top of state tax, federal tax and Social Security. Those three do not care where you live or work.
- All the dollar amounts rest on one assumed salary. It is stated rather than measured, because nobody publishes average pay for Lancaster. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the East Hempfield Township conclusion holds.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Lancaster while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the East Hempfield Township end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- Workers commuting from Lancaster to East Hempfield 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 Lancaster to East Hempfield 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.
- Monetary figures derive from a single stated salary assumption; no published wage series covers Pennsylvania municipalities such as Lancaster. The flat structure of the local tax means the East Hempfield Township comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Lancaster address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Lancaster 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?
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?
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?
Lancaster'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?
1,769 workers make it. The pairing comes from federal commuting data rather than from guesswork, and thin routes are excluded rather than estimated.
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 1,769 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.