Ohio layers a state income tax with city-level income taxes in most metro areas. Enter your salary to see what lands in your account.
Fills in a national-average starting salary — edit it below to match your offer.
Your estimated take-home pay
$1,636
per paycheck
$42,526 annually · Effective tax rate: 18.2%
Role salaries and the NABCEP premium are national-average estimates from industry salary data — actual pay varies by state, employer, and experience. Not tax advice.
Ohio's state income tax rate is moderate and recently got simpler after the legislature flattened the brackets. But the part that catches newcomers off guard is the municipal income tax. Columbus charges 2.5%. Cleveland charges 2.5%. Cincinnati charges 1.8%. These are not small numbers, and they come on top of the state rate. If you work in one city and live in another, Ohio has a credit system that partially offsets the double hit, but "partially" is doing heavy lifting in that sentence. The net effect is that your actual combined income tax burden in an Ohio metro can land between 6% and 7%, which is higher than it looks when you only Google "Ohio state tax rate."
The flip side of the tax picture is that Ohio's cost of living absorbs the damage. Median rent in Columbus sits around $1,200 for a one-bedroom. In Cleveland it is closer to $1,000. A household earning $85,000 in Ohio retains more discretionary income after taxes, housing, and groceries than one earning $110,000 in a coastal metro where the state tax is lower but a one-bedroom apartment costs $2,400. The paycheck calculator shows the tax piece. The housing market is what completes the comparison.