Scranton to Pittston Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LACKAWANNA to LUZERNE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.4%
Scranton, residents
Work rate
1%
Pittston Township, non-residents
You pay
3.4%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxScranton already charges its residents more than Pittston 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 Pittston Township costs you nothing extra. Scranton charges residents about 3.4%, at least as much as Pittston Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $2,040 a year, wherever you work.
- Plenty of people make this trip. About 1,019 travel from Scranton to Pittston Township, ranking it 3 of 9 places residents commute to. It is one of the busier routes out of the municipality.
- For the Scranton to Pittston Township commute the residence governs. Scranton's resident rate of about 3.4% equals or exceeds Pittston Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 3.4%, or $2,040 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.
- Approximately 1,019 workers commute from Scranton to Pittston Township, ranking this 3 of 9 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 Scranton | $2,040 |
|---|---|
| Working in Pittston Township | $2,040 |
| 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. Scranton and Pittston 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 Scranton and Pittston 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 Scranton. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Pittston Township commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- Check two things. A Scranton postal address may not match your taxing municipality. That catches out plenty of people near a boundary, and the state has an official lookup for it. Philadelphia is the other one to watch. It runs its wage tax separately, outside the pattern used for Pittston Township.
- Pennsylvania's local rule is a greater-of rule, not an additive one: the liability for a Scranton resident working in Pittston 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 Scranton–Pittston 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 Scranton to Pittston Township differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- Verify two things before relying on these figures. Municipal taxing boundaries do not track postal geography, so the applicable jurisdiction for a Scranton address should be confirmed through the state's official lookup. Separately, Philadelphia's wage tax operates outside this framework and is not governed by the greater-of rule applied here, which affects any pairing involving the city rather than Pittston Township generally.
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 Scranton's about 3.4% and Pittston 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?
Scranton'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?
1,019 workers make it. The pairing comes from federal commuting data rather than from guesswork, and thin routes are excluded rather than estimated.
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 3.4%) 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 1,019 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.