Philadelphia to Middletown Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · PHILADELPHIA to BUCKS County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.74%
Philadelphia, residents
Work rate
1%
Middletown 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 Middletown 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 Philadelphia, work in Middletown Township, and your local tax is your home rate: about 3.74%. That is $2,244 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- Among everyone commuting into Middletown Township, you are at the top for local tax. This dataset tracks 3 routes into Middletown Township, and Philadelphia carries the highest rate of any of them. Your neighbors on the same journey from elsewhere pay less than you do.
- Around 3,144 people make this trip from Philadelphia into Middletown Township for work. It is a well-worn route. That is part of why the tax treatment is worth setting out.
- Residence controls this pairing: Philadelphia levies about 3.74% on residents, at or above Middletown Township's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 3.74%, or $2,244 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.
- Philadelphia carries the highest effective local rate across 3 commuting routes into Middletown Township recorded here. Two workers doing the same job at the same employer therefore face different local liabilities depending purely on residence, and this route is the most expensive of the set.
- The Philadelphia to Middletown Township flow carries approximately 3,144 workers according to Census LODES origin-destination statistics — a substantial share of either municipality's workforce, and enough that the outcome here has aggregate fiscal consequence for both.
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 Middletown 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
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for Philadelphia and Middletown 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 Philadelphia and Middletown Township. This page is about the layer that does.
- Sixty thousand a year is a benchmark. It is not a guess at what people in Philadelphia 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 Middletown Township.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Philadelphia while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the Middletown Township end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- The two rates applicable to a Philadelphia–Middletown 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 Philadelphia–Middletown Township municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- The reference salary is a stated benchmark, not an estimate of Philadelphia earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Middletown Township commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Philadelphia address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Philadelphia rate. Second, Philadelphia administers its wage tax outside this framework, with its own resident and non-resident rates and its own credit arrangements, so any pairing touching it should be checked against the city's own schedule.
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. Philadelphia levies about 3.74% on residents and Middletown 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?
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 sets it. Your residence rate is the larger, so it governs regardless of where the job is.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
It is. 3,144 workers travel this pair, per the federal origin-destination survey; smaller routes fall below the publication floor and get no page.
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 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 basis for including this route?
Route volume is 3,144 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.