Living in District of Columbia, working in Maryland
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay District of Columbia
$3,104
on a seventy-thousand wage
Maryland would want
$2,961
The agreement is worth
$0
in money — the gain is one return, not two
File this
MW507
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Here is the honest answer for District of Columbia to Maryland: this agreement saves you paperwork, not money. District of Columbia charges $3,104 on a seventy-thousand-dollar wage and Maryland would charge $2,961 — less. You would have ended up paying the District of Columbia amount either way. What you gain is one tax return instead of two, and the right state taking the right amount out of every paycheck.
- Watch what happens as the salary grows. At forty-five thousand dollars District of Columbia takes $1,534. At a hundred thousand it takes $5,532, while Maryland would have wanted $4,386. The distance between two states is rarely a fixed amount — it is a function of what you earn.
- The agreement only works if you claim it. As a District of Columbia resident, give your employer the exemption certificate for Maryland, and expect to sign a fresh one most years. Without it on file, Maryland takes tax from every paycheck. Then you must file there to get it back.
- For this direction the agreement is procedural rather than pecuniary. District of Columbia's charge of $3,104 at seventy thousand dollars exceeds Maryland's $2,961, so the resident-credit mechanism would have produced the same total liability without any agreement at all. ⭐ The benefit is real but administrative: a single return rather than a resident-plus-nonresident pair, correct withholding through the year instead of a refund claim against the work state, and no cash-flow cost from over-withholding.
- Scaling matters here: District of Columbia charges $1,534 on forty-five thousand dollars and $5,532 on one hundred thousand, where Maryland would levy $4,386 on the latter. Because state schedules differ in both rate and structure, the interstate differential is a function of income rather than a constant, and comparisons drawn at a single salary generalize poorly.
- Reciprocity operates by employee election rather than automatically. The exemption certificate must be lodged with the employer and is generally renewable each year; absent it, Maryland withholding continues and a nonresident return becomes necessary to recover it. ⚠️ Employers do not apply the agreement on the basis of a home address alone, so a commuter who never files the certificate obtains none of the benefit while remaining fully eligible for it.
What lands in your account
A $75,000 salary
Filing as
Paid
$2,237per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $58,164 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $16,836 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.45% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
District of Columbia against Maryland
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
+$3,674a year in Maryland, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | District of Columbia | Maryland |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,164 | $58,394 |
| Worth after local prices | $52,493 | $56,167 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.45% | 22.14% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 6% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.59% | 0.97% |
| Price level | 110.8 | 104 |
| Housing prices | 168.5 | 119.9 |
| Fuel tax | 23.5¢ | 23.5¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $5.08 | $5.00 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: District of Columbia, Statewide average; Maryland, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$69,177in Maryland, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $74,650 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$5,823 |
| Prices in Maryland | 104 vs 111 |
State taxes and state price levels only. No city tax, and no housing market.
What each state would charge, across the ladder
Reference wages for a single filer, not a claim about anyone's salary. The last column is the difference the agreement actually removes — which is the gap between the two states, not Maryland's whole charge.
| Wage | District of Columbia charges | Maryland would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,534 | $1,774 | $240 |
| $70,000 | $3,104 | $2,961 | $0 |
| $100,000 | $5,532 | $4,386 | $0 |
What this page cannot tell you
- This covers wages from a job. It does not cover self-employment, rent or investment income — those follow the ordinary rules for Maryland.
- ⚠️ And it is a deal between two states. City and county taxes are not part of it, and several of these states have them.
- Every agreement in this dataset applies to wages and salaries only. Business, rental, gain and investment income sourced to Maryland remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a Maryland return notwithstanding the agreement.
- ⚠️ Reciprocity binds the state layer only and commonly does NOT extend to municipal or county income taxes — Pennsylvania's local earned income tax is the standard example, remaining payable at the place of employment despite the state-level agreement. Local liabilities are excluded from every figure on this page.