Lower Paxton Township to Susquehanna Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · DAUPHIN to CAMBRIA County · tax year 2026
Home rate
2%
Lower Paxton Township, residents
Work rate
1%
Susquehanna 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 taxLower Paxton Township already charges its residents more than Susquehanna 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 Lower Paxton Township, work in Susquehanna Township, and your local tax is your home rate: about 2%. That is $1,200 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- Roughly 770 people commute from Lower Paxton Township to Susquehanna Township, which makes this route number 2 out of 3 tracked into that workplace. A normal-sized flow rather than a dominant one.
- Residence controls this pairing: Lower Paxton Township levies about 2% on residents, at or above Susquehanna Township's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 2%, or $1,200 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.
- This flow carries 770 workers, ranking 2 among 3 recorded routes into Susquehanna Township and 2 of 2 destinations recorded for Lower Paxton Township. 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 Paxton Township | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Working in Susquehanna 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
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for Lower Paxton Township and Susquehanna Township 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.
- Everything here is the local earned income tax and nothing else. State income tax applies on top, as do federal tax and Social Security. None of those change when you cross a municipal line between Lower Paxton Township and Susquehanna Township. This page is about the layer that does.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for Lower Paxton Township. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Susquehanna Township commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- A postal address in Lower Paxton 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 Susquehanna Township.
- The two rates applicable to a Lower Paxton Township–Susquehanna Township 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.
- Figures cover the local earned income tax exclusively. Pennsylvania's flat state income tax, federal income tax and FICA apply in addition and are invariant to the Lower Paxton Township–Susquehanna Township municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- 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 Paxton Township to Susquehanna Township 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 Paxton 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 Susquehanna Township.
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 Paxton Township levies about 2% on residents and Susquehanna Township 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?
Nothing extra. The tax is redirected rather than increased, so this particular crossing costs you no more than working in Lower Paxton Township would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Lower Paxton 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?
It is a smaller route: 770 workers. That affects how representative it is, not whether the tax arithmetic applies — the rules are the same on a quiet road as a busy one.
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 770 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.