Living in Maryland, working in Pennsylvania
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Maryland
$2,961
on a seventy-thousand wage
Pennsylvania would want
$2,149
The agreement is worth
$0
in money — the gain is one return, not two
File this
REV-419
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Between Maryland and Pennsylvania the arithmetic is a wash. A seventy-thousand-dollar wage owes $2,961 at home against $2,149 in Pennsylvania, and the home figure is the bigger of the two. So your total does not move. One return instead of two, and correct withholding from day one — that is what you actually get.
- It does not stay the same as you earn more. On forty-five thousand dollars the Maryland bill is $1,774; on a hundred thousand it is $4,386. Pennsylvania would have charged $3,070 at that higher wage. The two states pull apart as the salary rises, which is why this matters more to a senior job than a starter one.
- One piece of paper stands between you and this. Your employer needs the Pennsylvania exemption certificate from you, usually once a year. Without it they must keep withholding Pennsylvania tax from a Maryland resident. You would then be filing a return there after all.
- This pairing yields no reduction in total liability — $2,961 at home against $2,149 in Pennsylvania on seventy thousand dollars — because the home state's larger charge would have fully absorbed a credit for the work state's tax. ⭐ What the agreement removes is the nonresident return and the year-long over-withholding that precedes its refund, a cash-flow effect rather than a liability one.
- The differential is income-dependent rather than fixed. Maryland's liability runs $1,774 at forty-five thousand dollars and $4,386 at one hundred thousand, against $3,070 in Pennsylvania at the upper figure. Where one state applies a flat rate and the other a graduated schedule the gap widens or narrows monotonically with income, so a single-salary comparison understates how much the pairing matters across a career.
- The benefit is conditional on filing the exemption certificate with the employer, typically renewed annually. ⚠️ Employer withholding defaults to the work state in its absence, irrespective of eligibility, and the remedy is a nonresident return in Pennsylvania. The practical failure mode is therefore not ineligibility but non-election — the agreement exists and the commuter simply never claims it.
What lands in your account
A $75,000 salary
Filing as
Paid
$2,246per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $58,394 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $16,606 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.14% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Maryland against Pennsylvania
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
+$4,644a year in Pennsylvania, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Maryland | Pennsylvania |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,394 | $59,290 |
| Worth after local prices | $56,167 | $60,810 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.14% | 20.95% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 6% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | Yes |
| Property tax rate | 0.97% | 1.3% |
| Price level | 104 | 97.5 |
| Housing prices | 119.9 | 85.8 |
| Fuel tax | 23.5¢ | 57.6¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $5.00 | $2.60 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Maryland, Statewide average; Pennsylvania, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$68,271in Pennsylvania, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $73,668 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$6,729 |
| Prices in Pennsylvania | 98 vs 104 |
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 Pennsylvania's whole charge.
| Wage | Maryland charges | Pennsylvania would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,774 | $1,382 | $0 |
| $70,000 | $2,961 | $2,149 | $0 |
| $100,000 | $4,386 | $3,070 | $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 Pennsylvania.
- ⚠️ 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 Pennsylvania remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a Pennsylvania 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.