Pennsylvania Local Sales Tax Calculations

To our understanding, Pennsylvania is an origin-based sales tax state. This means that if you have a physical location in Pennsylvania, sales tax should be collected based on where you, the seller, are located. 

  • If you do not have a physical location in Pennsylvania, you would only collect the state sales tax rate of 6% on all orders shipped to Pennsylvania. 

There are only two locations in Pennsylvania that have an additional local tax rate: Allegheny County and Philadelphia. 

  • This means that the local tax rate will only apply if you have an Allegheny County or Philadelphia address listed in your Business Profile or State Nexus Settings and the order has a Ship To address in Pennsylvania. Otherwise,  if this address is not in Alleghany County or Philadelphia the local sales tax is not collected. 
  • Please note, if you're shipping your items to Amazon and they are then fulfilling the orders to customers in Pennsylvania from their warehouses, the local tax rate does not apply because none of Amazon’s facilities in Pennsylvania are located in Allegheny County or  Philadelphia.
  • If the order's Ship To address is in Alleghany County or Philadelphia, the purchaser would be responsible for paying use tax. The seller can choose to collect the local use tax for the customer, but TaxJar's calculations do not support this.

To our understanding, Pennsylvania doesn't require sellers to report county breakdowns  unless the items were shipped to the customer directly from a location in Philadelphia or Allegheny county.

  • Because of this, if you are an out-of-state seller, you will not see county breakdowns in this Report.
  • If you are an in-state seller, you will only see breakdowns for Allegheny and Philadelphia counties if you have an order that originates from within that county.  
Why does your Sales Tax Calculator show this local 1% sales tax for all Pennsylvania addresses? 
  • We show this 1% in our free calculator tool so that sellers who have sales that are eligible for this added local tax are aware it exists.
  • Please note that the Sales Tax Calculator does not support nexus determination, sourcing, product tax-exemptions (or, product-specific reduced rates), or sales tax holidays.
    • If you need any of the above factors considered in your sales tax rates, we'd recommend using the TaxJar API which calculates accurately based on your Pennsylvania State Settings. 

We explain more about this in our Pennsylvania Sales Tax Guide and we offer supporting state documentation here.