Local Income Tax Rate by Zip Code Misses the School District

Bexley, Ohio is an enclave inside Columbus, and both charge a 2.5% municipal income tax according to the rate file behind Ohio's Finder. The local income tax rate still differs, because of the school district. Columbus City Schools levies no income tax. Bexley City School District levies 0.75% on the traditional base, so a Bexley household with $100,000 of that base pays roughly $750 a year that the Columbus household does not. Neither a state tax table nor a zip code lookup prints that boundary.

Local income taxes are charged by cities, counties, school districts and, in a few places, a metro government, and the boundaries that decide them run through neighborhoods. A remote worker who has narrowed the search to three towns needs the rate for three addresses, not three states.

Below are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan, New York and Louisville, Kentucky: the lookup tool for each, what it asks for, and the rule that decides whether a home office changes the answer.

Why the zip code gives you the wrong tax

A zip code is a delivery route. A school district is a taxing body with its own map, and a city's corporate limits can zigzag through a single subdivision.

Ohio's Department of Taxation school district income tax FAQ states: "The city you live in is not always the same as the school district you live in." Its school district page tells you to "enter your full home address into The Finder". Pennsylvania's address tool carries a disclaimer to the same effect, quoted further down. A listing with the street number hidden is not enough to price the local tax.

The property tax bill for a parcel usually names the school district, because school levies are printed on it. The property tax walkthrough on this site shows where that bill lives for a given address, which confirms the district before you run the tools below.

Ohio: a city rate, a school district rate, and a different rule for each

Ohio stacks a city rate on a school district rate, and the state publishes all of it as a downloadable rate table behind The Finder.

The municipal file lists 678 municipalities with a rate in effect on 27 October 2026. The most common rate is 1.0%, carried by 266 of them. Eleven sit at zero. The top is 3.0%, shared by Bedford and Parma Heights. The big cities cluster at 2.5%: Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Dayton all show 2.5%, Youngstown 2.75%, and Cincinnati 1.8%, which it has charged since October 2020 after dropping from 2.1%.

The school district layer is separate. The department's page says: "As of January 2026, 210 Ohio school districts have an income tax." In the rate file, the nonzero district rates run from 0.25% to 2.00%, and 1.0% is the most common. None of the big-city districts named above (Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati) charges one. Many suburban and rural districts do.

The department states the residence rule plainly: "Unlike city taxes, you only pay school district income taxes based on where you live, not where you work." Its FAQ adds that "Individuals who work, but do not live, in a taxing school district are not subject to the district's income tax." Working from home changes nothing here. The district tax goes wherever your house is.

Each taxing district also uses one of two bases, and the rate file labels them.

• Traditional districts tax modified adjusted gross income less exemptions. The department's page says "Retirement income may be taxable under this method."
• Earned income districts tax wages and self-employment income only. The FAQ states that "earned income" does not include "retirement income, interest, dividends and capital gains, and unemployment benefits."

The file has 214 nonzero district entries in effect on 27 October 2026: 146 traditional (one is spelled "TRADITONAL") and 68 earned income. The department's page, dated January 2026, says 210, and neither source explains the gap of four, so count from the file you download. For a salaried household the two bases land close together. For a household living partly on a pension or a brokerage account, a 1.0% traditional district and a 1.0% earned income district are not the same tax.

What the stacking looks like on five addresses

Here are the city and district rates from the same file for addresses that sit inside both the named city and the named district. Confirm in The Finder that the actual house is inside both.

Two of those rows carry a date you would only see in the raw file. Westerville CSD's earned income tax starts on 1 January 2026, so a 2025 comparison table would show that district at zero. Oberlin CSD's 2.00% row ends on 31 December 2027, and the file's next row sets the district at 1.25% from 1 January 2028. School district income taxes are voted on, and the file records each window. Open the CSV, not just the search box, when comparing districts.

When a home office becomes the "principal place of work"

City tax is where the home office does matter, because Ohio cities tax both residents and people who work inside them. The withholding rules are in Ohio Revised Code 718.011, read on 27 October 2026.

Two parts of it bear on remote work. First, the definition of a temporary worksite closes with this sentence: "'Worksite location' does not include the home of an employee." Second, "principal place of work" is defined in three tiers. It is the fixed location you are required to report to on a regular basis. If there is none, it is the worksite you are required to report to. If there is neither, it is the location in Ohio where you spend the greatest number of days in the calendar year performing services for the employer.

Read plainly, a hybrid worker required to be in a downtown office three days a week has that office's city as the principal place of work. A worker with no required office falls through to the third tier, which is a count of days, and for someone working from home every day that count points at the home. How your employer's payroll and your city apply that to you is their determination. Ask payroll which tier applies to you.

The same section carries the occasional-entrant rule: an employer is not required to withhold a city's tax for work performed there "on twenty or fewer days in a calendar year", unless that city is your principal place of work or one of the listed exceptions applies. A remote worker who visits a client's Ohio city eight times a year generally stays under it.

The Finder file does not show how a home city credits tax withheld by a work city; that is set city by city. If two cities will touch a hybrid paycheck, ask the home city's tax office for its credit rule.

Pennsylvania: your home is a worksite, and the higher rate wins

Pennsylvania's local Earned Income Tax works by comparison rather than by stacking. The Department of Community and Economic Development's local withholding FAQ sets the rule: an employee's "Total Resident EIT Rate" for the municipality where they live is compared to the "Work Location Non-Resident EIT Rate" for the municipality where they work. "The applicable EIT rate owed and to be withheld is always the higher of the two rates."

DCED's list of business worksites includes "residences of home-based employees", and the FAQ tells employers they need to register with the tax collector for an employee's home municipality when that employee works from home, "thus establishing additional worksite locations." Put a home office in the comparison and both sides of it can end up being the same municipality.

The lookup is DCED's Find Your Withholding Rates by Address page. It has two address blocks, HOME ADDRESS and WORK ADDRESS, with a button to copy one into the other. It returns the PSD code, which DCED describes as six-digit numbers "that uniquely identify each municipality in Pennsylvania", along with the rates and the collector. The disclaimer says: "We recommend you contact the county, municipality and/or school district provided as a match for the address you entered to confirm the address fall within their geographic boundaries." The geocoder is outside DCED's control.

I did not copy Pennsylvania municipal EIT rates into the tables here. On 27 October 2026 the DCED page that reaches the official register needed an interactive session, and a rate copied from a secondary list is how a comparison goes wrong. Run each candidate address through the tool yourself.

DCED spells out two remote-work cases:

• Living in Pennsylvania, employer outside it. The employer is not required to withhold local EIT, but "the PA resident employee will still be subject to and owe the 'Total Resident EIT Rate' based on their PA home municipality." The employer may withhold as a courtesy. If it does not, you make quarterly estimated payments to the local collector yourself.
• Living outside Pennsylvania, working in it. The resident PSD code is 880000 and the resident rate is 0%, so the work location's nonresident rate applies.

Philadelphia runs on its own statute

Philadelphia is outside the Act 32 comparison. Its Wage Tax page lists the rate effective 1 July 2026 as 3.735% for residents and 3.425% for nonresidents, down from 3.74% and 3.43% a year earlier. The page says "All employed Philadelphia residents owe the Wage Tax, regardless of where they work."

The refund page repeats it from the other side: "Resident employees are taxable whether working in or out of Philadelphia." Refunds for days worked outside the city are for nonresidents only. A nonresident supplies employer-signed documentation and a worksheet of dates and locations, files within three years, and normally waits six to eight weeks.

Live in Philadelphia and the 3.735% follows you to any desk. Live outside it with a Philadelphia employer and the 3.425% depends on where the work is done and on the refund paperwork.

Maryland, Indiana and Michigan: three different units

Maryland charges by county, and the date is December 31

Every Maryland county and Baltimore City levies a local income tax as a percentage of Maryland taxable net income. The Comptroller's 2025 resident booklet prints the chart. Twelve of the 24 subdivisions sit at 3.20%, including Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's. Dorchester is at 3.30%, Talbot 2.40%, and the lowest flat rate is Worcester at 2.25%. Anne Arundel and Frederick use brackets instead of one rate. The chart's last line reads "Nonresidents use .0225", the rate the nonresident booklet calls the Special Nonresident Tax.

The rate is changing at the top. A Comptroller tax alert revised 22 December 2025 says counties and Baltimore City "may now impose a maximum local income tax rate of 3.30 percent in a tax year beginning after December 31, 2025." Dorchester went to 3.30% retroactively for 2025. For a 2026 or 2027 move, check the current chart rather than relying on the 2025 figures.

The booklet tells residents to use the county they lived in on the last day of the tax year. Move from Worcester to Howard in November and the whole year's local tax is figured at Howard's rate.

Indiana charges by county, and the date is January 1

Indiana's Departmental Notice #1, effective 1 October 2026, lists 92 county rates. They run from 0.5% in Porter County to 3.0% in Randolph. Marion County (Indianapolis) is 2.02% and Hamilton County, just north, is 1.1%. The notice puts the 2026 state rate at 2.95%, which means a Marion County resident's local rate is more than two-thirds of the state's.

The date rule runs the other way from Maryland's: "Both the county of residence and the county of principal business or employment of an individual are determined on Jan. 1 of the calendar year in which the individual's taxable year begins." Move from Hamilton to Marion in February and the year's county tax stays at Hamilton's 1.1%. If you are timing a move between two Indiana counties, the calendar is worth a look.

Michigan charges by city, and only 24 of them

Michigan Treasury's list opens with: "Twenty-four Michigan cities levy municipality taxes related to income." Treasury administers Detroit's. The other 23, from Albion to Walker, run their own forms and payments, and the list links each city's tax office. Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, Pontiac and Saginaw are on it. Treasury's city tax page also says Flint is moving under Treasury administration, a change that "takes effect January 1, 2027, impacting 2026 and future tax years."

Rates are not on the state page, so take each from the city's own office. The list does the first job, though: if a candidate Michigan town is not among the 24, it has no city income tax to look up.

New York City, Yonkers and Louisville: three bases that are not your salary

New York City is a resident tax with four brackets

The NYC rate schedule in the 2025 IT-201 instructions runs from 3.078% to 3.876% in four brackets. For a single filer, the top rate starts above $50,000 of NYC taxable income, with $1,813 of tax on the first $50,000. The nonresident instructions (IT-203) have city tax lines only for part-year city residents, which is the practical meaning of "resident tax": the city's income tax follows where you live.

Yonkers is a percentage of a percentage

Yonkers adds a "Yonkers resident tax rate (16.75%)" in the IT-201 worksheet. That 16.75% is a surcharge applied to your New York State tax (net of certain credits on the worksheet), not to your income, so a household with $5,000 of net state tax would owe about $838 to Yonkers. Nonresidents who earn wages there file Form Y-203, which multiplies the taxable amount by 0.5%.

New York State's home-office rule sits on top of the city tax. The IT-203 instructions allow days worked outside New York only when duties come from "necessity (not convenience) of the employer", and they add that "normal work days spent at home are considered days worked in New York State" if your assigned or primary work location is a bona fide employer office in New York. That is a state rule, not a city one, and it reaches people who leave New York but keep a job assigned to a New York office. The employer-residency side of that question is covered in getting a remote work state approval in writing.

Louisville layers a school board rate on top

Louisville Metro's Form OL-3 for 2025 is the net profit return for individuals and businesses, and it shows two columns: 1.45% for "Louisville Metro & Mass Transit" and 0.75% for "School Board". The instruction above Column B reads "Non-Resident Individuals Do Not Complete Column B", which means the school board portion follows residence. These are the OL-3's rates. A W-2 employee normally has the occupational tax withheld rather than filing this form.

The OL-3's W-2 worksheet, for employees whose employer did not withhold enough, apportions wages by "Total days worked in Louisville" over total days worked everywhere. For a remote worker, that ratio is set by where the days are spent.

The comparison sheet, worked on one hypothetical salary

Here is the arithmetic for a hypothetical single filer with a $100,000 tax base, a full-year resident at each address, working from home for an employer with no office in that state. Every rate is from the files cited above. The same $100,000 goes into every line, which simplifies: Philadelphia taxes wages, Maryland and New York City tax state-defined taxable income, an Ohio traditional district taxes MAGI less exemptions. Real bills will differ, mostly downward where the base is net of deductions.

On the same $100,000, the local tax runs from $500 in Porter County to $4,500 in Oberlin. Within Ohio, Cincinnati comes in below Columbus and Bexley above both, because of a 0.75% school district inside the Columbus area.

A sheet you can check later has these columns, one row per candidate address:

1. Full street address, not the zip.
2. Which tool returned the rate and on what date: The Finder, DCED, the Comptroller chart, DN#1, the city's own office.
3. Every layer the tool returned: city, county, school district, metro, and the PSD code or school district number.
4. The base each layer uses: wages, earned income, MAGI, state taxable income, or a percentage of state tax.
5. Which rule decides it: residence only, residence or workplace, higher of the two.
6. The date that fixes the rate: January 1 in Indiana, the last day of the year in Maryland, months of residence for an Ohio district.
7. Any start or end date on the rate, from the raw file where there is one.

Columns 5 and 6 decide the remote-work cases. A school district or a Philadelphia resident tax ignores where the desk is. An Ohio city tax and a Pennsylvania EIT comparison can turn on it. Indiana and Maryland care about which day you moved.

Which candidate towns need this lookup at all

If all your candidates are in a state whose cities and counties levy no income tax, the local layer is zero; look at the taxes that states without an income tax use instead.

Rates in all seven are set locally and change on local calendars, so put the read date in column 2 and check again before you sign a lease. In Ohio's file, Oberlin CSD's traditional rate falls from 2.00% to 1.25% on 1 January 2028, which would take the Oberlin row above from $4,500 to $3,750.