Living in West Virginia, working in Virginia
Reciprocal agreement · tax year 2026
You pay West Virginia
$2,317
on a seventy-thousand wage
Virginia would want
$3,264
The agreement is worth
$947
a year
File this
VA-4
with your employer
What the agreement does for you
- Cross the line from West Virginia into Virginia for work and you keep money you would otherwise lose. The home charge on seventy thousand dollars is $2,317. Virginia would have wanted $3,264 for the same wage. Because the two states have a deal, you pay home only, and $947 a year never leaves.
- The size of this depends on your pay. West Virginia charges $1,233 on forty-five thousand dollars and $3,691 on a hundred thousand. Against that, Virginia would have taken $4,989 at the higher figure. Check it against your own salary rather than the middle one.
- One piece of paper stands between you and this. Your employer needs the Virginia exemption certificate from you, usually once a year. Without it they must keep withholding Virginia tax from a West Virginia resident. You would then be filing a return there after all.
- Wages earned in Virginia by a West Virginia resident attract $2,317 rather than $3,264 at seventy thousand dollars, the agreement suppressing a differential of $947. ⚠️ That differential — not the work state's gross liability — is the correct statement of benefit, since the ordinary credit mechanism would have relieved the home charge rather than the foreign one.
- Liability under each schedule diverges with income: $1,233 and $3,691 in West Virginia at forty-five and one hundred thousand dollars respectively, against $4,989 in Virginia 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 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 Virginia. 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
$2,271per paycheck
| Take-home, year | $59,047 |
|---|---|
| Tax, year | $15,953 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.27% |
This is an average rate across all your pay — not the rate on your next dollar.
West Virginia against Virginia
A $75,000 salary
Compare with
−$8,165a year in Virginia, once local prices are leveled
| Measure | West Virginia | Virginia |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $59,047 | $58,041 |
| Worth after local prices | $65,774 | $57,609 |
| Share of pay taxed | 21.27% | 22.61% |
| State sales tax | 6% | 5.3% |
| Groceries exempt here | Yes | No |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.53% | 0.73% |
| Price level | 89.8 | 100.7 |
| Housing prices | 56.1 | 105.5 |
| Fuel tax | 20.5¢ | 32.6¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $1.20 | $0.60 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: West Virginia, 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
$87,734in Virginia, for the same life
| To match take-home only | $76,557 |
|---|---|
| Raise you would need | +$12,734 |
| Prices in Virginia | 101 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 Virginia's whole charge.
| Wage | West Virginia charges | Virginia would charge | Agreement is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $1,233 | $1,827 | $594 |
| $70,000 | $2,317 | $3,264 | $947 |
| $100,000 | $3,691 | $4,989 | $1,298 |
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 West Virginia'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.