Philadelphia to Upper Darby Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · PHILADELPHIA to DELAWARE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.74%
Philadelphia, residents
Work rate
1%
Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby 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 4,779 travel from Philadelphia to Upper Darby Township, ranking it 3 of 69 places residents commute to. It is one of the busier routes out of the municipality.
- Around 4,779 people make this trip from Philadelphia into Upper Darby Township for work. It is a well-worn route. That is part of why the tax treatment is worth setting out.
- The Philadelphia to Upper Darby Township commute is tax-neutral. Philadelphia's resident rate of about 3.74% is not exceeded by Upper Darby 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 4,779 workers commute from Philadelphia to Upper Darby Township, ranking this 3 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.
- The Philadelphia to Upper Darby Township flow carries approximately 4,779 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 Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby Township conclusion holds.
- 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 Upper Darby Township.
- The two rates applicable to a Philadelphia–Upper Darby 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–Upper Darby 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 Upper Darby Township 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 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 Upper Darby Township.
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 Upper Darby 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?
Nothing extra. The tax is redirected rather than increased, so this particular crossing costs you no more than working in Philadelphia would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. Philadelphia levies at least as much as Upper Darby Township, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
Yes — 4,779 people make this exact journey, according to the federal employment survey that tracks where workers live against where they work. Routes below a volume floor are not published, so a page existing here means the commute is real and measured.
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 4,779 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.