Living in Kentucky, working in Ohio
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Kentucky
$2,332
on a seventy-thousand wage
Ohio would want
$1,209
The agreement is worth
$0
in money — the gain is one return, not two
File this
IT-4
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Here is the honest answer for Kentucky to Ohio: this agreement saves you paperwork, not money. Kentucky charges $2,332 on a seventy-thousand-dollar wage and Ohio would charge $1,209 — less. You would have ended up paying the Kentucky 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.
- The size of this depends on your pay. Kentucky charges $1,457 on forty-five thousand dollars and $3,382 on a hundred thousand. Against that, Ohio would have taken $2,034 at the higher figure. Check it against your own salary rather than the middle one.
- None of this happens by itself. Living in Kentucky, you have to hand your employer the exemption form for Ohio, and keep doing it. Most states want it again each year. Miss it and Ohio withholds from every paycheck as though no agreement existed. You would get it back by filing there, which is the very thing the agreement was meant to spare you.
- For this direction the agreement is procedural rather than pecuniary. Kentucky's charge of $2,332 at seventy thousand dollars exceeds Ohio's $1,209, 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.
- Liability under each schedule diverges with income: $1,457 and $3,382 in Kentucky at forty-five and one hundred thousand dollars respectively, against $2,034 in Ohio at the upper point. The relevant figure for any individual is therefore the one at their own wage — the mid-ladder comparison is illustrative of direction, not of magnitude.
- The exemption is elective and employee-initiated: the certificate must be filed with the employer, and most agreement states require renewal annually. ⚠️ Without it on file the employer is obliged to withhold Ohio tax regardless of the agreement's existence, and recovery then requires a nonresident return in Ohio — restoring precisely the compliance burden the agreement removes, with the cash held by the wrong state until the claim is processed.
What lands in your account
A $75,000 salary
Filing as
Paid
$2,273per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $59,085 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $15,915 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.22% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Kentucky against Ohio
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
+$309a year in Ohio, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Kentucky | Ohio |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $59,085 | $60,246 |
| Worth after local prices | $65,311 | $65,619 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.22% | 19.67% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 5.75% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.75% | 1.31% |
| Price level | 90.5 | 91.8 |
| Housing prices | 62.9 | 72.1 |
| Fuel tax | 25¢ | 38.5¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.10 | $1.60 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Kentucky, Statewide average; Ohio, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$74,581in Ohio, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $73,282 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$419 |
| Prices in Ohio | 92 vs 90 |
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 Ohio's whole charge.
| Wage | Kentucky charges | Ohio would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,457 | $521 | $0 |
| $70,000 | $2,332 | $1,209 | $0 |
| $100,000 | $3,382 | $2,034 | $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 Ohio.
- ⚠️ 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 Ohio remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a Ohio 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.