Wilkes-Barre to Kingston Borough
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · LUZERNE to LUZERNE County · tax year 2026
Home rate
3%
Wilkes-Barre, residents
Work rate
1%
Kingston Borough, non-residents
You pay
3%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxWilkes-Barre already charges its residents more than Kingston Borough 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
- Nothing changes for this commute. A resident of Wilkes-Barre pays about 3% either way. It makes no difference whether they work at home or travel to Kingston Borough. The home rate is the higher of the two, and the higher one wins. That is $1,800 a year.
- From Wilkes-Barre, this is destination number 4 of 5 tracked. From Kingston Borough, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
- The Wilkes-Barre to Kingston Borough commute is tax-neutral. Wilkes-Barre's resident rate of about 3% is not exceeded by Kingston Borough's non-resident rate, so under the state's rule the resident rate applies and the effective figure is about 3% — $1,800 annually at the reference salary. Withholding is remitted to the residence in full and the work location receives no share.
- From the origin, Kingston Borough is Wilkes-Barre's 4 destination of 5 recorded. From the destination, recorded inflows are too few to rank origins against one another, which is common for smaller workplaces in this dataset.
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 Wilkes-Barre | $1,800 |
|---|---|
| Working in Kingston Borough | $1,800 |
| 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 Wilkes-Barre and Kingston Borough 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.
- 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 Wilkes-Barre and Kingston Borough. This page is about the layer that does.
- Sixty thousand a year is a benchmark. It is not a guess at what people in Wilkes-Barre 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 Kingston Borough.
- Two practical cautions. Postal addresses and taxing boundaries do not always agree. Your post may say Wilkes-Barre while your taxing municipality is a different one. Pennsylvania publishes an official lookup to settle it. The same caution applies at the Kingston Borough end. Philadelphia is a special case too, with its own wage tax.
- Workers commuting from Wilkes-Barre to Kingston Borough 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.
- 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 Wilkes-Barre–Kingston Borough municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- The reference salary is a stated benchmark, not an estimate of Wilkes-Barre earnings, for which no municipal-level published source exists. The local earned income tax is proportional, so all dollar figures for the Kingston Borough 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 Wilkes-Barre address should be confirmed against the DCED municipal lookup before relying on the Wilkes-Barre 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?
The rates compete rather than stack. about 3% 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?
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?
The one where you live. Wilkes-Barre levies at least as much as Kingston Borough, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
It is a smaller route: 534 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%) 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 534 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.