Louisville Take-Home Pay Calculator

The Louisville Metro Revenue Commission collects the occupational license tax for Louisville Metro Government, the Transit Authority of River City (TARC), and the Jefferson County Board of Education. For residents of the small Anchorage Independent school district, the school share goes to the Anchorage board instead. You see one local line on your pay stub, but the money is split among those bodies.

Because Louisville and Jefferson County merged their governments in 2003, the Metro rate already does the job a county occupational tax does elsewhere in Kentucky. Workers in Covington, Florence, or Bowling Green face a separate county payroll tax on top of the city rate; in Louisville there is no second county layer to add.

The tax applies to gross wages from the first dollar, with no standard deduction or exemption, so a resident earning $40,000 already pays $880 a year locally.

Take a single filer earning $75,000 who lives and works in Louisville. Federal income tax is $7,670, Social Security $4,650, and Medicare $1,088. Kentucky's flat 3.5% applies after the $3,360 standard deduction, which comes to $2,507. The 2.2% Metro rate adds $1,650, so take-home pay is $57,435 a year, or $4,786 a month.

Move that same paycheck to a worker who lives in Oldham County and drives in each day. The 1.45% commuter rate costs $1,088, leaving $57,998, so the commuter keeps $562 more than the Louisville resident. A Kentucky paycheck with no local tax at all would leave $59,085, which puts the resident rate's cost at $1,650 a year, or roughly $63 per biweekly check.

The gap grows with pay. At $100,000 a resident pays $2,200 and a commuter $1,450; at $150,000 the figures are $3,300 and $2,175. See the Kentucky $75,000 salary breakdown for the state-only version of these numbers.

Employers with staff in Jefferson County register with the Revenue Commission and withhold the tax every payday, choosing the resident or nonresident rate from the home address on file. If you move into or out of the county, tell payroll, since the move changes which of the two rates applies.

Many Louisville workers live across the Ohio River in Clark and Floyd counties, Indiana. Kentucky and Indiana have a reciprocity agreement, so an Indiana resident can give a Louisville employer Form 42A809 to stop Kentucky state withholding and pay state tax at home. The agreement does not reach the Metro tax: the 1.45% nonresident rate still comes out of every check.

If your employer is based elsewhere and does not withhold the Metro tax on work you do from home in Jefferson County, you are responsible for filing and paying it directly with the Revenue Commission. Kentucky state withholding is a separate matter set by Form K-4.

Louisville's 2.2% resident rate sits in the middle of the cities we cover. Lexington residents pay 2.75% ($2,063 at $75,000), Ashland charges 2.5% ($1,875), and Covington 2.45% ($1,838). Bowling Green, Paducah, and several smaller cities charge 2% ($1,500), and Henderson's 1.65% costs $1,238.

For commuters, Louisville is the cheapest big job market in the state: its 1.45% nonresident rate is lower than any flat city rate on our list, and no county tax is stacked on top. Lexington charges commuters 2.25%, so compare the Lexington calculator if you are weighing jobs in both cities.