Upper Saucon Township to Allentown
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LEHIGH to LEHIGH County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.1%
Upper Saucon Township, residents
Work rate
1.28%
Allentown, non-residents
You pay
1.28%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$108
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
workplace governsAllentown charges commuters more than Upper Saucon 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 Upper Saucon Township into Allentown raises your local tax. Home rate: about 1.1%. Work rate for non-residents: about 1.28%. You pay the higher. That works out at $768 a year, or $108 more than earning the same at home.
- Upper Saucon Township is one of 12 places sending workers into Allentown, ranking 8 by size with about 650 commuters. It is Upper Saucon Township's 1 destination of 2.
- Allentown's non-resident rate of about 1.28% exceeds Upper Saucon Township's resident rate of about 1.1%, so the effective rate for this commute is about 1.28% — $768 at the reference salary, an increment of $108 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 12 inflows to Allentown tracked here, Upper Saucon Township ranks 8 at 650 workers, and this is that municipality's 1 destination of 2. 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 Upper Saucon Township | $660 |
|---|---|
| Working in Allentown | $768 |
| Difference | $108 |
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 Upper Saucon Township and Allentown 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 Upper Saucon Township and Allentown. 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 Upper Saucon Township. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the Allentown conclusion holds.
- Check two things. A Upper Saucon Township 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 Allentown.
- The two rates applicable to a Upper Saucon Township–Allentown 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 Upper Saucon Township–Allentown 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 Upper Saucon Township. The flat structure of the local tax means the Allentown comparison is scale-invariant, so the rate difference rather than the dollar difference is the transferable result.
- Verify two things before relying on these figures. Municipal taxing boundaries do not track postal geography, so the applicable jurisdiction for a Upper Saucon Township 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 Allentown generally.
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. Upper Saucon Township levies about 1.1% on residents and Allentown levies about 1.28% 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 $108 a year here. The same salary earned in Upper Saucon Township would not carry it.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
Allentown sets it here. Its non-resident rate exceeds your home rate, so that is what is withheld.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
650 people travel it. Volume decides whether a route gets published at all, never what the tax on it 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 1.1%) and the non-resident work rate (about 1.28%); 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 $108 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 measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 650 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.