Philadelphia to Tinicum Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · PHILADELPHIA to BUCKS County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.74%
Philadelphia, residents
Work rate
1%
Tinicum 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 Tinicum 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
- Nothing changes for this commute. A resident of Philadelphia pays about 3.74% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to Tinicum Township. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $2,244 a year.
- Plenty of people make this trip. About 1,923 travel from Philadelphia to Tinicum Township, ranking it 18 of 69 places residents commute to. It is one of the busier routes out of the municipality.
- The Philadelphia to Tinicum Township commute is tax-neutral. Philadelphia's resident rate of about 3.74% is not exceeded by Tinicum Township's non-resident rate, so under the state's rule the resident rate applies and the effective figure is about 3.74% — $2,244 annually at the reference salary. Withholding is remitted to the residence in full and the work location receives no share.
- Approximately 1,923 workers commute from Philadelphia to Tinicum Township, ranking this 18 of 69 recorded destinations. Flows in the upper band of a municipality's outbound distribution carry the rate outcome to a meaningful population rather than to a handful of workers.
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 Tinicum 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 Tinicum 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 Tinicum Township. This page is about the layer that does.
- All the dollar amounts rest on one assumed salary. It is stated rather than measured, because nobody publishes average pay for Philadelphia. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the Tinicum Township conclusion holds.
- 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 Tinicum Township end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Philadelphia resident working in Tinicum 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–Tinicum Township municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- Monetary figures derive from a single stated salary assumption; no published wage series covers Pennsylvania municipalities such as Philadelphia. The flat structure of the local tax means the Tinicum Township comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- 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?
Only once, at the higher rate. Between Philadelphia's about 3.74% and Tinicum Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Not a cent on this one. The crossing changes where the money is sent, not how much of it leaves, so your total matches a stay-at-home commute.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. Philadelphia levies at least as much as Tinicum Township, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
It is. 1,923 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 1,923 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.