PA EIT Rates and PSD Codes: Find Your Total Resident EIT Rate

Disclaimer: This is educational information. Always verify specifics with your CPA or tax advisor. Tax rates and filing requirements can change, and your situation may have nuances that only a qualified professional can address.

The Two-Minute Answer

Your EIT rate is the percentage of your wages that goes to local Earned Income Tax in Pennsylvania, typically 1% to 3% depending on your municipality. Your PSD code is the 6-digit number that tells the tax system exactly which municipality and school district you live in. You need both for the Residency Certification Form every new PA employee fills out.

Both come from the same place: the state's official lookup tool at munstats.pa.gov (run by the PA Department of Community and Economic Development). Enter your home and work addresses, and it returns your PSD code, your Total Resident EIT Rate, the nonresident rate where you work, and the LST amount. Two minutes, done, and it's the current year's official number rather than whatever a coworker remembered from 2023.

What Does "Total Resident EIT Rate" Actually Mean?

It's your municipality's resident tax rate plus your school district's rate, combined into one number. Pennsylvania lets both your township (or borough, or city) and your school district tax your earned income, and the form wants the total.

Two real examples from our corner of the state:

• Cranberry Township: 1.0% total. That's 0.5% to the township and 0.5% to the Seneca Valley School District.
• City of Pittsburgh: 3.0% total for residents. That's 1% to the city and 2% to Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Most Pittsburgh-area suburbs land between 1% and 1.5%. Statewide, over 2,500 municipalities each set their own rate, which is exactly why the lookup tool exists and why you shouldn't guess.

What Is a PSD Code?

PSD stands for Political Subdivision. It's a 6-digit code that uniquely identifies where you live for local tax purposes. The structure is logical once you see it:

• First 2 digits: the tax collection district (roughly, your county's collection region)
• Middle 2 digits: your school district within that region
• Last 2 digits: your specific municipality

Your payroll department uses your resident PSD code to route your withheld tax to the right collector, and the collector uses it to split the money between your township and school district. A wrong PSD code means your money goes to the wrong municipality, and unwinding that is a genuine headache. We've seen it take months.

Why Two PSD Codes?

The Residency Certification Form asks for your resident PSD code (where you live) and your work location PSD code (where your employer is). Both matter because Pennsylvania withholds at the higher of two rates, which brings us to the part that confuses everyone.

Resident Rate vs. Nonresident Rate: The Higher-of Rule

Every municipality actually publishes two EIT rates:

• a resident rate for people who live there, and
• a nonresident rate for people who only work there.

Your employer withholds at whichever is higher: your home municipality's resident rate or your work municipality's nonresident rate. The money then gets split between jurisdictions under Act 32, the law that reorganized PA's local tax collection in 2012.

The classic Pittsburgh example: the city's famous 3% rate is the resident rate. If you live in Cranberry Township (1%) and commute to a Pittsburgh office, you don't pay 3%. Pittsburgh's nonresident rate is 1%, Cranberry's resident rate is 1%, so you pay 1%. But flip it around and live in the city while working in the suburbs, and you're paying the full 3% resident rate no matter where your desk is.

How to Fill Out the Residency Certification Form (CLGS-32-6)

Every PA employer is required to collect this form from every new employee, and it's the source of most PSD confusion. Here's the clean way through it:

• Step 1: Go to munstats.pa.gov and use the "Find Local Tax" address search.
• Step 2: Enter your home address. Write down the resident PSD code and Total Resident EIT Rate it returns.
• Step 3: Enter your employer's address. Write down the work location PSD code and nonresident rate.
• Step 4: Copy those four numbers onto the form, sign it, and hand it to payroll.

If you move, even one township over, you file a new form. Rates and PSD codes change at municipal lines, not just county lines. An employee who moves from Ross Township to McCandless and never updates the form is being withheld at the wrong rate and paid to the wrong collector, and both of those come back to bite at filing time. Once you know your numbers, our guide to filing PA local taxes covers what happens with them at tax time.

For Employers: Why This Form Is Your Shield

If you run a business with employees, the Residency Certification Form isn't paperwork theater. It's your proof. When a tax collector questions why you withheld 1% instead of 1.5% for someone, the signed form showing the rate the employee certified is what protects you.

Our rules for staying clean on this:

• Collect the form at hire, before the first payroll run. Retroactive fixes mean amended filings.
• Re-verify every address in January. People move and forget to tell payroll. A once-a-year sweep catches it.
• Enter the PSD codes and rates into your payroll system exactly as certified. In QuickBooks, that means setting up each employee's local jurisdictions individually. Tedious, yes. Cheaper than penalties, also yes.
• Watch for rate changes each January. Municipalities and school districts can change rates. The DCED registry updates; your payroll file doesn't update itself.

If your QuickBooks file has employees mapped to wrong jurisdictions or last year's rates, that's a standard fix in our QuickBooks cleanup service. And if nobody's watching this stuff month to month, that's exactly what our monthly bookkeeping covers.

Quick Reference: Pittsburgh-Area Numbers

• Cranberry Township: 1.0% total resident EIT (0.5% township + 0.5% Seneca Valley schools)
• City of Pittsburgh: 3.0% resident rate, 1.0% nonresident rate
• Most Pittsburgh suburbs: 1.0% to 1.5%, always confirm with the DCED lookup
• PA state income tax (separate from all of this): flat 3.07%

Rates change, so treat this as a snapshot and pull your current number from munstats.pa.gov before putting it on a form. For how EIT fits into Pennsylvania's whole four-layer system alongside the LST, our complete guide to PA local taxes covers the full picture. And if you're staring at an LST line on your W-2 wondering what that is, here's what LST on your W-2 means.

The Bottom Line

Your Total Resident EIT Rate is your municipality plus school district rate combined. Your PSD code is the 6-digit address of your municipality in the tax system. Both live at munstats.pa.gov, both go on the Residency Certification Form, and both need to be right, because the higher-of rule means real money moves based on those numbers every payday.

Managing payroll across multiple PA municipalities? Book a free 15-minute Financial Health Check and we'll tell you whether your local tax setup is actually right. No cost, no pressure.

Remember: This is educational information. Always verify specifics with your CPA or tax advisor. Tax rates and filing requirements change, and your specific situation matters.