Living in Ohio, working in Pennsylvania
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Ohio
$1,209
on a seventy-thousand wage
Pennsylvania would want
$2,149
The agreement is worth
$940
a year
File this
REV-419
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- If you live in Ohio and work in Pennsylvania, this agreement is worth real money. On a wage of seventy thousand dollars, Ohio asks $1,209 and Pennsylvania would have taken $2,149. You pay the Ohio figure and stop there. That is a gap of $940 a year, every year you make the trip.
- The size of this depends on your pay. Ohio charges $521 on forty-five thousand dollars and $2,034 on a hundred thousand. Against that, Pennsylvania would have taken $3,070 at the higher figure. Check it against your own salary rather than the middle one.
- None of this happens by itself. Living in Ohio, you have to hand your employer the exemption form for Pennsylvania, and keep doing it. Most states want it again each year. Miss it and Pennsylvania 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 a Ohio resident earning wages in Pennsylvania, the agreement produces a genuine liability reduction rather than a purely procedural one. At seventy thousand dollars of wages, Ohio levies $1,209 against Pennsylvania's $2,149 on the same income, a difference of $940. ⚠️ Absent the agreement the saving would NOT be Pennsylvania's full charge: you would file there as a nonresident and Ohio would credit the tax paid, capped at its own liability on that income — so the counterfactual total is approximately the higher of the two figures, and the agreement's value is the spread between them.
- Liability under each schedule diverges with income: $521 and $2,034 in Ohio at forty-five and one hundred thousand dollars respectively, against $3,070 in Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania tax regardless of the agreement's existence, and recovery then requires a nonresident return in Pennsylvania — 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
$2,317per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $60,246 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $14,754 |
| Share of pay taxed | 19.67% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Ohio against Pennsylvania
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
−$4,809a year in Pennsylvania, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Ohio | Pennsylvania |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $60,246 | $59,290 |
| Worth after local prices | $65,619 | $60,810 |
| Share of pay taxed | 19.67% | 20.95% |
| State sales tax | 5.75% | 6% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | Yes |
| Property tax rate | 1.31% | 1.3% |
| Price level | 91.8 | 97.5 |
| Housing prices | 72.1 | 85.8 |
| Fuel tax | 38.5¢ | 57.6¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.60 | $2.60 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Ohio, 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
$81,969in Pennsylvania, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $76,421 |
|---|---|
| Raise you would need | +$6,969 |
| Prices in Pennsylvania | 98 vs 92 |
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 | Ohio charges | Pennsylvania would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $521 | $1,382 | $860 |
| $70,000 | $1,209 | $2,149 | $940 |
| $100,000 | $2,034 | $3,070 | $1,036 |
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.
- The comparison here assumes a single filer and treats both states as taxing the same income. Your own numbers will differ.
- 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.
- Figures are computed for a single filer at the stated wage, treating Ohio's and Pennsylvania's definitions of taxable income as equivalent and modeling the resident credit as limited to the home state's own liability. Real returns diverge on filing status, deductions each state allows separately, and credit limitation rules — so these are comparative magnitudes, not a computation of anyone's liability.