Moosic Borough to Scranton
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LACKAWANNA to LACKAWANNA County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1%
Moosic Borough, residents
Work rate
1%
Scranton, 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 Scranton'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
- Nothing changes for this commute. A resident of Moosic Borough pays about 1% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to Scranton. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $600 a year.
- Moosic Borough is one of 10 places sending workers into Scranton, ranking 8 by size with about 593 commuters. It is Moosic Borough's 1 destination of 1.
- The Moosic Borough to Scranton commute is tax-neutral. Moosic Borough's resident rate of about 1% is not exceeded by Scranton's non-resident rate, so under the state's rule the resident rate applies and the effective figure is about 1% — $600 annually at the reference salary. Withholding is remitted to the residence in full and the work location receives no share.
- Across 10 inflows to Scranton tracked here, Moosic Borough ranks 8 at 593 workers, and this is that municipality's 1 destination of 1. Rate and volume are independent: a large catchment is not necessarily a high-rate one, and the two rankings frequently disagree.
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 Moosic Borough | $600 |
|---|---|
| Working in Scranton | $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 Moosic Borough and Scranton 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 Moosic Borough or Scranton 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 Moosic Borough. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the Scranton conclusion holds.
- A postal address in Moosic Borough 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 Scranton.
- The two rates applicable to a Moosic Borough–Scranton 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 Moosic Borough to Scranton 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 Moosic Borough. The flat structure of the local tax means the Scranton comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- 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 Moosic Borough. 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 Scranton.
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. Moosic Borough levies about 1% on residents and Scranton 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?
Moosic Borough'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: 593 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.
Both towns charge the same — does the boundary matter at all then?
Not for what you pay. Both sides charge about 1%; the line only determines who banks it.
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 593 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.