Scranton to South Abington Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LACKAWANNA to LACKAWANNA County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.4%
Scranton, residents
Work rate
1%
South Abington 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 South Abington 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 Scranton pays about 3.4% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to South Abington Township. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $2,040 a year.
- Not many people do this journey. South Abington Township is 9 of 9 destinations for Scranton residents, with roughly 507 making the trip. Same rule, fewer people.
- The Scranton to South Abington Township commute is tax-neutral. Scranton's resident rate of about 3.4% is not exceeded by South Abington Township's non-resident rate, so under the state's rule the resident rate applies and the effective figure is about 3.4% — $2,040 annually at the reference salary. Withholding is remitted to the residence in full and the work location receives no share.
- South Abington Township ranks 9 of 9 destinations for Scranton, carrying 507 workers. Flows in the lower band still reflect real employment links, but the aggregate fiscal consequence of the rate outcome here is correspondingly limited.
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 South Abington 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
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for Scranton and South Abington 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 Scranton and South Abington 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 Scranton. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the South Abington Township conclusion holds.
- A postal address in Scranton 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 South Abington Township.
- The two rates applicable to a Scranton–South Abington 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 Scranton–South Abington 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 Scranton. The flat structure of the local tax means the South Abington 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 Scranton. 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 South Abington 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. Scranton levies about 3.4% on residents and South Abington 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?
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 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: 507 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.
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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 507 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.