Old Forge Borough to Scranton
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LACKAWANNA to LACKAWANNA County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1%
Old Forge 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 Old Forge 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.
- Roughly 789 people commute from Old Forge Borough to Scranton, which makes this route number 2 out of 10 tracked into that workplace. A normal-sized flow rather than a dominant one.
- The Old Forge Borough to Scranton commute is tax-neutral. Old Forge 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.
- This flow carries 789 workers, ranking 2 among 10 recorded routes into Scranton and 1 of 1 destinations recorded for Old Forge Borough. 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 Old Forge 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 Old Forge 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 Old Forge 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.
- Sixty thousand a year is a benchmark. It is not a guess at what people in Old Forge Borough 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 Scranton.
- A postal address in Old Forge 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 Old Forge 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 Old Forge 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.
- The reference salary is a stated benchmark, not an estimate of Old Forge Borough earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Scranton commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- 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 Old Forge 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. Old Forge 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?
The one where you live. Old Forge Borough levies at least as much as Scranton, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
789 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 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 789 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.