Pittsburgh to Pleasant Hills Borough
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · ALLEGHENY to ALLEGHENY County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3%
Pittsburgh, residents
Work rate
0%
Pleasant Hills Borough, non-residents
You pay
3%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxPittsburgh already charges its residents more than Pleasant Hills Borough 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 Pittsburgh, work in Pleasant Hills Borough, and your local tax is your home rate: about 3%. That is $1,800 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- A quiet route out of Pittsburgh. About 513 people commute to Pleasant Hills Borough, placing it 23 of 23 tracked destinations. The arithmetic above holds regardless of how many travel it.
- Residence controls this pairing: Pittsburgh levies about 3% on residents, at or above Pleasant Hills Borough's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 3%, or $1,800 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.
- With 513 workers, this is a lower-volume link, 23 of 23 destinations recorded for Pittsburgh. Volume does not affect the rate determination; it affects only how many people the determination reaches.
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 Pittsburgh | $1,800 |
|---|---|
| Working in Pleasant Hills Borough | $1,800 |
| 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. Pittsburgh and Pleasant Hills Borough 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.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Pittsburgh or Pleasant Hills Borough 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 Pittsburgh 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 Pleasant Hills Borough.
- A postal address in Pittsburgh 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 Pleasant Hills Borough.
- Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Pittsburgh resident working in Pleasant Hills Borough 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.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Pittsburgh to Pleasant Hills Borough 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 Pittsburgh earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Pleasant Hills Borough 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 Pittsburgh. 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 Pleasant Hills Borough.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
The rates compete rather than stack. about 3% where you live, about 0% where you work, and you pay the greater of the two.
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 Pittsburgh would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Pittsburgh sets it. Your residence rate is the larger, so it governs regardless of where the job is.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 513 workers. That affects how representative it is, not whether the tax arithmetic applies — the rules are the same on a quiet road as a busy one.
The town I work in charges nothing — does that help me?
Not really. Pleasant Hills Borough levies nothing on people who work there, but Pittsburgh still charges its residents about 3% — 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%) 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 513 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 a zero work-district rate?
A zero work-district rate eliminates the source-based claim but leaves residence-based liability intact at about 3%. Residence liability is unaffected by where earnings are sourced.