Lower Burrell to Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · WESTMORELAND to ALLEGHENY County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1%
Lower Burrell, residents
Work rate
1%
Pittsburgh, non-residents
You pay
1%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxThe two rates are identical, so the test is a wash — but this pair sits exactly at the line, and any rise in Pittsburgh's commuter rate would start costing you. 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 Pittsburgh costs you nothing extra. Lower Burrell charges residents about 1%, at least as much as Pittsburgh asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $600 a year, wherever you work.
- Roughly 964 people commute from Lower Burrell to Pittsburgh, which makes this route number 56 out of 85 tracked into that workplace. A normal-sized flow rather than a dominant one.
- For the Lower Burrell to Pittsburgh commute the residence governs. Lower Burrell's resident rate of about 1% equals or exceeds Pittsburgh's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1%, or $600 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 flow carries 964 workers, ranking 56 among 85 recorded routes into Pittsburgh and 1 of 1 destinations recorded for Lower Burrell. The rate outcome above therefore applies to a meaningful but not dominant share of that workplace's inbound commuters.
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 Lower Burrell | $600 |
|---|---|
| Working in Pittsburgh | $600 |
| 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
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for Lower Burrell and Pittsburgh are not stacked. Pennsylvania takes the larger one. What is collected then gets divided between the two municipalities. That division does not change what comes out of your pay.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Lower Burrell or Pittsburgh takes sits on top of state tax, federal tax and Social Security. Those three do not care where you live or work.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for Lower Burrell. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Pittsburgh commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- A postal address in Lower Burrell 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 Pittsburgh.
- The two rates applicable to a Lower Burrell–Pittsburgh commute are alternatives, not addends. The statute fixes the employee's liability at the greater of them and then apportions the proceeds, with the residence receiving up to its own rate and the excess passing to the work location. The apportionment is fiscally significant to the municipalities and immaterial to the worker.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Lower Burrell to Pittsburgh 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.
- 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 Lower Burrell to Pittsburgh differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- 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 Lower Burrell. 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 Pittsburgh.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
No — you pay the higher of the two rates and never the sum. Lower Burrell levies about 1% on residents and Pittsburgh levies about 1% on people who work there; whichever is larger is what you owe, and your employer withholds it.
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?
Lower Burrell sets it. Your residence rate is the larger, so it governs regardless of where the job is.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
964 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
Both towns charge the same — does the boundary matter at all then?
Not to your total. Lower Burrell and Pittsburgh both levy about 1%, so the amount is settled either way — what the boundary decides is which authority receives it, and that is an accounting question rather than a cost to you.
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%) 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 964 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.
What is the effect of identical rates either side of the boundary?
Both jurisdictions levy about 1%, so the governing rate is identical regardless of which rule allocates it. The boundary affects revenue attribution between authorities, not employee liability.