Philadelphia to Lower Merion Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · PHILADELPHIA to MONTGOMERY County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.74%
Philadelphia, residents
Work rate
0%
Lower Merion Township, non-residents
You pay
3.74%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxPhiladelphia already charges its residents more than Lower Merion 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
- Good news for this commute. Working in Lower Merion Township costs you nothing extra. Philadelphia charges residents about 3.74%, at least as much as Lower Merion Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $2,244 a year, wherever you work.
- Few other routes into Lower Merion Township appear in this data, so there is little to compare at that end. The other direction has plenty. Philadelphia sends workers to 69 places, and this is number 29 by size.
- For the Philadelphia to Lower Merion Township commute the residence governs. Philadelphia's resident rate of about 3.74% equals or exceeds Lower Merion Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 3.74%, or $2,244 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.
- Lower Merion Township draws few recorded inflows, so cross-origin comparison is thin at the destination end. The origin is better covered: Philadelphia appears as the home municipality for 69 tracked destinations, of which this ranks 29 by worker count.
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 Philadelphia | $2,244 |
|---|---|
| Working in Lower Merion Township | $2,244 |
| 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
- One thing worth being clear about, because it catches people out. You are not charged by both places. Philadelphia and Lower Merion Township do not add their rates together. Pennsylvania picks the higher of the two, and that is what you pay. Adding them would roughly double the bill.
- 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 Philadelphia and Lower Merion 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 Philadelphia. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Lower Merion Township commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- A postal address in Philadelphia 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 Lower Merion Township.
- Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Philadelphia resident working in Lower Merion Township is the higher of the two applicable rates, not their sum. The distinction is worth stating plainly because the additive reading is intuitive and would overstate the charge by roughly a factor of two. What is divided between the municipalities is the remittance, not the worker's liability.
- 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 Philadelphia–Lower Merion 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 Philadelphia to Lower Merion 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 Philadelphia. 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 Lower Merion Township.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
Only once, at the higher rate. Between Philadelphia's about 3.74% and Lower Merion Township's about 0%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
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?
Philadelphia'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?
1,451 workers make it. The pairing comes from federal commuting data rather than from guesswork, and thin routes are excluded rather than estimated.
The town I work in charges nothing — does that help me?
Not really. Lower Merion Township levies nothing on people who work there, but Philadelphia still charges its residents about 3.74% — and residence is the claim that does not go away when you cross a line to work.
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 3.74%) and the non-resident work rate (about 0%); 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 1,451 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.
What is the effect of a zero work-district rate?
A zero work-district rate eliminates the source-based claim but leaves residence-based liability intact at about 3.74%. Residence liability is unaffected by where earnings are sourced.