West Hazleton Borough to Hazle Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LUZERNE to LUZERNE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.5%
West Hazleton Borough, residents
Work rate
1%
Hazle Township, non-residents
You pay
1.5%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxWest Hazleton Borough already charges its residents more than Hazle 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 Hazle Township costs you nothing extra. West Hazleton Borough charges residents about 1.5%, at least as much as Hazle Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $900 a year, wherever you work.
- Cheapest of the lot. This dataset covers 3 routes into Hazle Township, and coming from West Hazleton Borough means the lowest local tax rate of any of them.
- For the West Hazleton Borough to Hazle Township commute the residence governs. West Hazleton Borough's resident rate of about 1.5% equals or exceeds Hazle Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1.5%, or $900 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 route ranks last for effective local rate — that is, cheapest — among 3 recorded inflows to Hazle Township. The comparison holds workplace constant, so the difference reflects residence and nothing else.
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 West Hazleton Borough | $900 |
|---|---|
| Working in Hazle Township | $900 |
| 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 West Hazleton Borough and Hazle 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.
- This covers the local tax only. Whatever West Hazleton Borough or Hazle 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 West Hazleton Borough 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 Hazle Township.
- Check two things. A West Hazleton Borough 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 Hazle Township.
- The two rates applicable to a West Hazleton Borough–Hazle 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.
- Only the local earned income tax component is modeled for the West Hazleton Borough to Hazle 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 West Hazleton Borough earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Hazle Township commute scale linearly with income and the rate comparison holds at every salary.
- Verify two things before relying on these figures. Municipal taxing boundaries do not track postal geography, so the applicable jurisdiction for a West Hazleton Borough 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 Hazle Township generally.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
Only once, at the higher rate. Between West Hazleton Borough's about 1.5% and Hazle Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
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?
West Hazleton Borough'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?
565 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 1.5%) 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 565 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.