Summit Township to Erie
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CRAWFORD to ERIE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1%
Summit Township, residents
Work rate
1.65%
Erie, non-residents
You pay
1.65%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$390
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
workplace governsErie charges commuters more than Summit Township charges its own residents, so the work rate wins the greater-of test and the difference is real money. 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
- Commuting from Summit Township into Erie raises your local tax. Home rate: about 1%. Work rate for non-residents: about 1.65%. You pay the higher. That works out at $990 a year, or $390 more than earning the same at home.
- Summit Township is one of 10 places sending workers into Erie, ranking 2 by size with about 1,108 commuters. It is Summit Township's 1 destination of 1.
- Erie's non-resident rate of about 1.65% exceeds Summit Township's resident rate of about 1%, so the effective rate for this commute is about 1.65% — $990 at the reference salary, an increment of $390 over the home-only position. The state consolidated collection but did not equalise rates, which is why the workplace remains capable of raising the bill.
- Across 10 inflows to Erie tracked here, Summit Township ranks 2 at 1,108 workers, and this is that municipality's 1 destination of 1. Rate and volume are independent: a large catchment is not necessarily a high-rate one, and the two rankings frequently disagree.
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 Summit Township | $600 |
|---|---|
| Working in Erie | $990 |
| Difference | $390 |
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 Summit Township and Erie 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 Summit Township or Erie takes sits on top of state tax, federal tax and Social Security. Those three do not care where you live or work.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for Summit Township. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Erie commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- A postal address in Summit Township 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 Erie.
- The two rates applicable to a Summit Township–Erie 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 Summit Township to Erie 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.
- 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 Summit Township to Erie differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- 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 Summit Township. 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 Erie.
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. Summit Township levies about 1% on residents and Erie levies about 1.65% on people who work there; whichever is larger is what you owe, and your employer withholds it.
What does crossing this boundary actually cost me?
Working across the line costs $390 a year here. The same salary earned in Summit Township would not carry it.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Erie's, because it is the higher of the two. Where you work sets the rate on this route, and your home town receives its share out of what is collected rather than charging you separately.
Is this a common enough commute to be worth modeling?
1,108 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 1%) and the non-resident work rate (about 1.65%); 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.
What is the marginal local tax cost of this commute?
Marginal annual liability attributable to working outside the residence jurisdiction is $390 at the reference salary. This is a tax cost rather than a commuting expense and is not deductible as one. It scales with income and with the rate differential, not with distance traveled.
Which district's rate governs on this route?
The work district's non-resident rate exceeds the residence rate and therefore governs. Withholding occurs at that rate, and distribution between the two districts happens after collection without further employee liability.
What is the basis for including this route?
Route volume is 1,108 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.