Living in Pennsylvania, working in Virginia
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay Pennsylvania
$2,149
on a seventy-thousand wage
Virginia would want
$3,264
The agreement is worth
$1,115
a year
File this
VA-4
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Commuting from Pennsylvania into Virginia is one of the cases where this genuinely saves you something. At seventy thousand dollars, home wants $2,149 and Virginia wanted $3,264. You pay home. The difference, $1,115, stays in your pocket.
- Watch what happens as the salary grows. At forty-five thousand dollars Pennsylvania takes $1,382. At a hundred thousand it takes $3,070, while Virginia would have wanted $4,989. 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 Pennsylvania resident, give your employer the exemption certificate for Virginia, and expect to sign a fresh one most years. Without it on file, Virginia takes tax from every paycheck. Then you must file there to get it back.
- Virginia taxes wages more heavily than Pennsylvania at this income, so the agreement is worth money rather than merely administration: $2,149 against $3,264 on seventy thousand dollars, a difference of $1,115. ⚠️ Note the direction-dependence — the reverse commute between the same two states carries no dollar benefit at all, because the credit mechanism already equalizes it.
- Scaling matters here: Pennsylvania charges $1,382 on forty-five thousand dollars and $3,070 on one hundred thousand, where Virginia would levy $4,989 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, Virginia 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
$2,280per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $59,290 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $15,710 |
| Share of pay taxed | 20.95% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
Pennsylvania against Virginia
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
−$3,201a year in Virginia, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | Pennsylvania | Virginia |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $59,290 | $58,041 |
| Worth after local prices | $60,810 | $57,609 |
| Share of pay taxed | 20.95% | 22.61% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 5.3% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | No |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | Yes | No |
| Property tax rate | 1.3% | 0.73% |
| Price level | 97.5 | 100.7 |
| Housing prices | 85.8 | 105.5 |
| Fuel tax | 57.6¢ | 32.6¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $2.60 | $0.60 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Pennsylvania, Statewide average; Virginia, Statewide average. Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
Moving to
$79,992in Virginia, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $76,934 |
|---|---|
| Raise you would need | +$4,992 |
| Prices in Virginia | 101 vs 98 |
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 Virginia's whole charge.
| Wage | Pennsylvania charges | Virginia would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,382 | $1,827 | $445 |
| $70,000 | $2,149 | $3,264 | $1,115 |
| $100,000 | $3,070 | $4,989 | $1,919 |
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 Virginia.
- ⚠️ 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 Virginia remains taxable there under ordinary nonresident rules, and a commuter with such income may still owe a Virginia 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 Pennsylvania's and Virginia'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.