Upper Allen Township to Lower Allen Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CUMBERLAND to CUMBERLAND County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.7%
Upper Allen Township, residents
Work rate
1%
Lower Allen Township, non-residents
You pay
1.7%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxUpper Allen Township already charges its residents more than Lower Allen 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 Lower Allen Township costs you nothing extra. Upper Allen Township charges residents about 1.7%, at least as much as Lower Allen Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $1,020 a year, wherever you work.
- Roughly 542 people commute from Upper Allen Township to Lower Allen Township, which makes this route number 3 out of 3 tracked into that workplace. A normal-sized flow rather than a dominant one.
- For the Upper Allen Township to Lower Allen Township commute the residence governs. Upper Allen Township's resident rate of about 1.7% equals or exceeds Lower Allen Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1.7%, or $1,020 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.
- This flow carries 542 workers, ranking 3 among 3 recorded routes into Lower Allen Township and 3 of 3 destinations recorded for Upper Allen Township. The rate outcome above therefore applies to a meaningful but not dominant share of that workplace's inbound commuters.
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 Upper Allen Township | $1,020 |
|---|---|
| Working in Lower Allen Township | $1,020 |
| 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
- A common worry, answered. You do not pay Upper Allen Township and Lower Allen Township both. Only one rate applies, the higher of the two. The two councils then sort out between themselves who gets what, and your bill is unaffected.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever Upper Allen Township or Lower Allen Township 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 Upper Allen Township 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 Lower Allen Township.
- A postal address in Upper Allen 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 Lower Allen Township.
- Workers commuting from Upper Allen Township to Lower Allen Township are subject to one rate, not two. The statute directs the employer to withhold the greater of the resident and non-resident rates; the allocation between the two taxing bodies is a remittance mechanic invisible to the employee. Treating the two rates as cumulative is the most common misreading of the statute.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the Upper Allen Township to Lower Allen Township 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 Upper Allen Township earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Lower Allen Township 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 Upper Allen 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 Lower Allen Township.
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 1.7% where you live, about 1% where you work, and you pay the greater of the two.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
On this route, nothing. You owe exactly what you would have owed working at home — the boundary is real on a map and invisible on your pay stub, which is not true of every pair of towns here.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Upper Allen Township 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?
542 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
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 1.7%) 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 542 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.