York to Spring Garden Township
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · YORK to YORK County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.25%
York, residents
Work rate
1%
Spring Garden Township, non-residents
You pay
1.25%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxYork already charges its residents more than Spring Garden 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 Spring Garden Township costs you nothing extra. York charges residents about 1.25%, at least as much as Spring Garden Township asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $750 a year, wherever you work.
- From York, this is destination number 4 of 5 tracked. From Spring Garden Township, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
- For the York to Spring Garden Township commute the residence governs. York's resident rate of about 1.25% equals or exceeds Spring Garden Township's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1.25%, or $750 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.
- From the origin, Spring Garden Township is York'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 York | $750 |
|---|---|
| Working in Spring Garden Township | $750 |
| 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 York and Spring Garden 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.
- 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 York and Spring Garden Township. 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 York. The local tax is a flat percentage. Scale every figure to your own salary and the Spring Garden Township conclusion holds.
- Check two things. A York 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 Spring Garden Township.
- The two rates applicable to a York–Spring Garden 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.
- 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 York–Spring Garden Township 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 York. The flat structure of the local tax means the Spring Garden Township 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 York 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 Spring Garden 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 York's about 1.25% and Spring Garden Township's about 1%, the larger governs — the two are never added together.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Nothing extra. The tax is redirected rather than increased, so this particular crossing costs you no more than working in York would.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. York levies at least as much as Spring Garden Township, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
741 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 1.25%) 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 741 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.