Scranton to Wilkes-Barre
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LACKAWANNA to LUZERNE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3.4%
Scranton, residents
Work rate
1%
Wilkes-Barre, 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 Wilkes-Barre 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 Scranton, work in Wilkes-Barre, and your local tax is your home rate: about 3.4%. That is $2,040 a year on a sixty-thousand salary. The work location adds nothing. Pennsylvania charges whichever rate is higher, and yours already is.
- Nobody commuting into Wilkes-Barre pays more local tax than someone coming from Scranton. There are 4 routes in this data and yours tops the list. That is worth knowing when comparing take-home with a colleague.
- Residence controls this pairing: Scranton levies about 3.4% on residents, at or above Wilkes-Barre's non-resident rate, so the outcome is the resident rate — about 3.4%, or $2,040 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.
- This route ranks first for effective local rate across 4 inflows to Wilkes-Barre tracked here. The differential is a function of residence alone; salary, employer and workplace are held constant across the comparison.
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 Wilkes-Barre | $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 Wilkes-Barre 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.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Scranton or Wilkes-Barre 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 Scranton 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 Wilkes-Barre.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Scranton while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the Wilkes-Barre end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- The two rates applicable to a Scranton–Wilkes-Barre 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.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Scranton to Wilkes-Barre 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 Scranton earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Wilkes-Barre commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- Two caveats bear on accuracy. First, postal addresses and municipal taxing boundaries diverge frequently in Pennsylvania, so a Scranton address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Scranton 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?
No — you pay the higher of the two rates and never the sum. Scranton levies about 3.4% on residents and Wilkes-Barre 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'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 commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 736 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 736 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.