Frequently Asked Questions

Cited answers to the questions Pennsylvania employers ask most — including the exceptions that change what you owe. Drawn from 45+ years of hands-on HR experience. General HR information, not legal advice.

What is Pennsylvania's minimum wage in 2026, and can Philadelphia or Pittsburgh set a higher one?

Pennsylvania's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and no Pennsylvania municipality may set a general minimum wage for private employers — the Minimum Wage Act preempts any local ordinance concerning its subject matter, except one adopted before January 1, 2006 that remained in effect on that date. The operative $7.25 comes from § 333.104(a.1), which raises Pennsylvania's minimum by the same amount and on the same date as any federal increase with no state legislation required, and which suspends the rate schedule printed at § 333.104(a) to the extent it differs; that schedule still reads $7.15, so rely on (a.1) or the Department's regulation. What Philadelphia and Pittsburgh do have is contract-triggered wage floors, which are not general minimum wages: Philadelphia's 21st Century Minimum Wage and Benefits Standard requires $17.63 an hour from July 1, 2026 of an employer with more than five employees that takes a new City contract, lease, concession or franchise, or more than $100,000 in City financial aid, with lower grandfathered rates for older unamended contracts, $16.82 for a one-year contract entered before July 1, 2026. Both cities gate those triggers by size, and reading past the trigger to the threshold is what keeps a small vendor from over-complying: Philadelphia reaches a for-profit service contractor only where it holds at least $10,000 in City contracts within a twelve-month period and has more than $1,000,000 in annual gross receipts, and a non-profit service contractor only above $100,000, so a for-profit with a $6,000 City contract and $400,000 of revenue is not covered at all. Pittsburgh requires prevailing wages for building service and food service employees working under a City service contract of more than $100,000, and for building service, food service, hotel and grocery employees who work at least 50 hours a year on a City-subsidized project — a subsidy of at least $100,000 approved after February 18, 2010, on a project that clears a closed list of sizes, meaning a commercial development of at least 100,000 square feet, a residential development of 50 or more units, or a grocery with at least 25,000 square feet of floor area. Two Pittsburgh details cut in opposite directions: independently owned restaurants other than cafeterias fall outside the definition of food service employee, while a separate Chapter 161 provision layers a $15.00 an hour floor over the prevailing-wage schedule, so § 161.38 read alone understates what you owe. Prevailing wage also applies to state public work where the estimated total project cost exceeds $25,000 and to Philadelphia City-work under § 17-107, and these regimes do not stack — Philadelphia's standard excludes anyone employed on a construction project already covered by prevailing wage. (43 P.S. §§ 333.104(a.1), 333.114a, 165-2(5) and 165-5; 34 Pa. Code § 231.101a(a); Phila. Code §§ 17-107, 17-1302, 17-1303 and 17-1305; Pittsburgh Code ch. 161, including § 161.38.)

Can I pay tipped employees $2.83 an hour in Pennsylvania?

Yes, but only on conditions the federal rules do not impose, and Pennsylvania's tipped-employee threshold is its own: the $2.83 cash wage is available only where the employee receives more than $135 a month in tips, against $30 a month under the FLSA, so a worker can be tipped federally and not tipped in Pennsylvania, in which case you owe the full $7.25. The credit is also unavailable unless you have informed the employee of the tip-credit provisions and the employee retains all tips, and you must pay the difference whenever $2.83 plus actual tips falls short of $7.25. Two Pennsylvania regulations that employers routinely mistake for federal law bite here — you must pay the full tip a patron authorizes on a card and may not deduct the processing fees, and you must give affected employees written notice of any tip-pooling arrangement at or before the employment offer or at least one pay period before it takes effect. A third divergence is larger and newer: § 231.111 incorporates the USDOL tipped-employee standards at 29 C.F.R. § 531.56 as they stood on May 7, 2022, with the exception of subsection (f)(4)(ii), which freezes the 2021 federal dual-jobs rule and its 20% workweek tolerance for non-tip-producing work into Pennsylvania law while leaving out that rule's companion 30-minute continuous-work limit. The Fifth Circuit vacated the federal rule in 2024 and USDOL restored the 1967 text, but nothing touched Pennsylvania's regulation, so a restaurant tracking current federal guidance can lose the credit for every hour a server spends past that 20% on side work, per employee per workweek, reachable for three years under the Wage Payment and Collection Law; enforcement posture on the frozen tolerance is untested, so plan on it applying. Service charges are their own trap — a mandatory service charge is not a tip, must be disclosed in the contract and on the menu and billed as a separate line, and while it counts as remuneration in computing the regular rate it may never be counted as a tip toward the credit. And if you hold a Philadelphia City contract, lease, concession, franchise or qualifying financial aid, Chapter 17-1300 commands a flat hourly wage excluding benefits with no tip-credit mechanism at all, so neither $2.83 nor $7.25 is your floor; otherwise, track tips per employee per month and keep the tip-credit records 34 Pa. Code § 231.34 requires. (43 P.S. § 333.103(d); 34 Pa. Code §§ 231.1, 231.43(a), 231.101a(b), 231.34, 231.111, 231.112, 231.113 and 231.114; Phila. Code § 17-1305(1); 29 U.S.C. § 203(t); 29 C.F.R. § 531.56; Restaurant Law Center v. U.S. Department of Labor (5th Cir. 2024).)

Do I have to give employees a lunch break or rest breaks in Pennsylvania?

Not for adults. Pennsylvania has no meal-or-rest-break entitlement for employees 18 and over and no missed-break premium of the California kind, but no minor may be employed for more than five hours continuously without an interval of at least 30 minutes, and a period of less than 30 minutes does not interrupt the continuous run. Breaks you do choose to give are governed by Pennsylvania's own definition of hours worked, not only by federal law: time allowed for meals is excluded from hours worked only where the employee is neither required nor permitted to work during it, so an unpaid lunch spent covering the phones is paid time, and short breaks of roughly 5 to 20 minutes count as hours worked. In Philadelphia this is not a clean statewide negative at all, because restroom breaks and periodic rest for employees who stand for long periods are named examples of the reasonable accommodation an employer must provide for pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition. The absence of a state rule is also exactly why one federal break rule operates here with nothing to displace it: the PUMP Act requires reasonable break time and a private space that is not a bathroom for an employee who needs to express breast milk, so an employer who takes the statewide negative at face value and writes a blanket no-breaks policy walks straight into a federal claim. Write the policy so that any unpaid meal period is genuinely duty-free, treat every short break as paid, and name the lactation space before someone has to ask for it. (34 Pa. Code § 231.1; PA Child Labor Act § 3(a), 43 P.S. § 40.3(a); 29 U.S.C. § 218d; 29 C.F.R. § 785.18; Phila. Code § 9-1128.)

Pennsylvania is an at-will state — can I fire an employee for any reason?

Largely yes — Pennsylvania's presumption of at-will employment is strong and its public-policy exception is narrow, the doctrine tracing to Geary v. United States Steel Corp. What at-will does not override is anti-discrimination law, which in Pennsylvania starts at four employees under the Human Relations Act rather than Title VII's fifteen, though the Act excludes religious, fraternal, charitable and sectarian corporations unless they are supported in whole or in part by governmental appropriations, and reaches them at four only for race, color, age, sex, national origin and non-job-related disability. Employers also over-correct in the other direction, though not nearly as far as they assume: the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law defines an employer as a public body, or an individual or entity that receives money from a public body to perform work or provide services for a public body, and public body is itself defined to include any other body created by Commonwealth or political subdivision authority or funded in any amount by or through Commonwealth or political subdivision authority. The Superior Court read that funding clause to make a recipient of Medicaid funding a public body and has kept citing that holding, federal district courts sitting in Pennsylvania have declined to follow it, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has never resolved the split — so a genuinely private, unfunded employer is outside the Act, but a nursing home, hospital, home-health agency, behavioral-health provider or state-grant recipient should plan on a state whistleblower claim being available against it rather than treating itself as an ordinary private employer. Before you terminate, check your headcount and entity type against that four-employee floor, check whether any public money reaches you, and check your city, because Philadelphia's Fair Practices Ordinance reaches employers with one or more employees. (Geary v. United States Steel Corp., 456 Pa. 171, 319 A.2d 174 (1974); PHRA § 4(b), 43 P.S. § 954(b); Whistleblower Law § 2, 43 P.S. § 1422; Denton v. Silver Stream Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, 739 A.2d 571, 576-77 (Pa. Super. 1999); Phila. Code § 9-1102(1)(h).)

My salaried Pennsylvania employee worked 50 hours last week — do I owe overtime, and how do I calculate it?

If the employee is non-exempt, yes, and the math is not the federal math: Pennsylvania overtime is weekly only — 1.5 times the regular rate for hours over 40, with no daily overtime — but for a salaried non-exempt employee the regular rate is that week's remuneration divided by 40, and the FLSA's fluctuating-workweek half-time multiplier is not permitted under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act. On a $1,000 weekly salary and 50 hours, that is a $25 regular rate and $37.50 for each of the 10 overtime hours, where federal fluctuating-workweek math would produce $20 and $10. Whether the employee is exempt at all is also a narrower question here than under the FLSA: the state act exempts only executives, administrators, professionals and outside salesmen, and Pennsylvania has never adopted the FLSA's computer-employee or highly-compensated-employee exemptions — the regulations Act 70 of 2021 abrogated were the definitions of executive, administrative and professional themselves, so those three terms now carry no state regulatory definition at all. A software engineer who is exempt federally as a computer employee, and a manager treated as exempt federally on total compensation alone, are both non-exempt in Pennsylvania and owed time and a half on every hour past 40 at that same salary-divided-by-40 rate — the most expensive divergence between the two schemes, and it lands on exactly the salaried employee this question is about. The same regulation carries an exemption employers miss: an employee of a retail or service establishment is outside the overtime requirement where their regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the applicable minimum hourly rate and more than half their compensation over a representative period of at least one month represents commissions on goods or services. If you run a health care facility there is also a daily limit that has nothing to do with pay — you generally may not require a covered direct-care employee to work beyond an agreed, predetermined and regularly scheduled daily shift, and the refusal cannot be grounds for discrimination, dismissal, discharge or any other employment decision adverse to the employee. Its exceptions are where hospital scheduling actually lives, so read them before concluding that a thirteenth hour is unlawful: the limit does not reach on-call time, does not reach hours the employee voluntarily accepts, and does not reach an unforeseeable emergent circumstance where the extra hours are a last resort after reasonable efforts to obtain other staffing have been exhausted, in which case the employee must be allowed up to one hour to arrange care for a minor child or an elderly or disabled family member; nor does it reach completing a patient-care procedure already under way. That last path carries a duty running back the other way, and it is the one employers never budget for: an employee required to work more than twelve consecutive hours under one of those exceptions is entitled to at least ten consecutive hours of off-duty time immediately after, which the employee may voluntarily waive but you may not require them to. (43 P.S. §§ 333.104(c) and 333.105(a)(5); 34 Pa. Code §§ 231.41, 231.43(f), 231.43(g) and 231.81; 34 Pa. Code §§ 231.82-231.84, abrogated by Act 70 of 2021 § 2215.1; Chevalier v. General Nutrition Centers, Inc., 220 A.3d 1038 (Pa. 2019); Prohibition of Excessive Overtime in Health Care Act, 43 P.S. § 932.3(a)(1), (a)(2), (b), (c) and (d).)

When do I have to give a departing Pennsylvania employee their final paycheck?

By the next regular payday on which those wages would otherwise be due — one deadline, whether the employee quit or you terminated them, and no immediate-payment rule of the California or Nevada kind. The 25% or $500 liquidated damages employers have heard about are not automatic on a merely late check: they attach only where wages remain unpaid for thirty days beyond the regularly scheduled payday, or shortages exceed 5% of gross wages on two scheduled paydays in the same calendar quarter, and no good-faith contest or dispute exists, including a good-faith assertion of a right of set-off or counterclaim. So where part of the amount is genuinely disputed, give the employee written notice of what you concede is due and pay that portion without condition within the statutory time. A wage claim can be brought for three years, and the court is directed to allow reasonable attorney fees to be paid by the defendant. (43 P.S. §§ 260.5(a), 260.6, 260.9a(f) and (g), and 260.10.)

Do I have to provide paid sick days to Pennsylvania employees?

There is no Pennsylvania paid-sick-leave statute, so the answer turns entirely on where each employee physically works, and three local jurisdictions impose a general accrual mandate. Philadelphia requires one hour per 40 hours worked in the city, capped at 40 hours a year, paid at ten or more employees and unpaid below that, where the size test is fewer than ten employees for at least 40 weeks in a calendar year rather than a headcount taken on the day someone asks. Pittsburgh, as amended effective January 1, 2026, requires one hour of paid sick time per 30 hours worked in the city, capped at 72 hours at fifteen or more employees and 48 hours below. Allegheny County requires one hour per 35 hours worked in the county at employers with twenty-six or more employees, capped at 40, except in a municipality that has its own not-less-stringent ordinance, which is what takes Pittsburgh out of the county rule. Philadelphia's headcount trigger then has an exception that inverts the usual answer: a chain establishment, meaning one doing business under the same trade name as fifteen or more establishments anywhere, must provide paid sick time regardless of the number of employees in that establishment, so a four-person franchise of a national brand owes paid time and not unpaid. Philadelphia's definition of employee is narrower than a raw headcount as well, excluding independent contractors, seasonal workers, adjunct professors, employees hired for a term of less than six months, interns and pool employees, and reaching only someone who works at least 40 hours in the city in a year. One further Philadelphia rule sits on top of that ordinance rather than beside it, and it is the one employers never see coming: a City contractor, lessee, concessionaire or franchisee with more than five employees, or a recipient of more than $100,000 in City financial aid that likewise has more than five employees, owes paid sick time even below the ten-employee paid trigger, because Chapter 17-1300 switches off subsections 9-4104(1)(a) and (b) while leaving the rest of Chapter 9-4100 running. Treat those three as a floor rather than a complete list — Philadelphia separately requires health care epidemic leave of health care employers with ten or more employees during a declared pandemic or epidemic, which the Chapter 9-4100 collective bargaining waiver does not reach, and paid leave for domestic workers at one hour per 40 hours worked capped at 40 a year, owed by any hiring entity other than for casual work. Before you build three separate accruals, check the safe harbor — all three excuse an employer whose existing paid-leave or PTO policy already meets the accrual requirement and may be used for the same purposes and under the same conditions — but do not assume the collective bargaining carve-outs match, because Philadelphia's are blanket waivers while Pittsburgh's and Allegheny County's excuse compliance only where the agreement itself makes available a sufficient amount of paid leave to meet that ordinance's accrual requirements, usable for the same purposes and under the same conditions, and both separately exclude construction-industry union members outright. (Phila. Code §§ 9-4103, 9-4104, including subsections (1)(a), (1)(b), (2) and (8), 9-4117 and 9-4503(3); Phila. Code §§ 17-1302(5), 17-1304(10) and 17-1305(2); Pittsburgh Code § 626.03(b), (c) and (m), as amended by Ord. No. 2025-1736; Allegheny County Health Department Rules and Regulations Art. XXIV §§ 2403(B), 2403(L) and 2411(B).)

We only have six employees in Pennsylvania — do discrimination and harassment laws apply to a company our size?

Yes, at four employees rather than Title VII's fifteen — the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act reaches any person employing four or more persons within the Commonwealth, and a complaint must be filed with the PHRC within 180 days after the alleged act of discrimination. What the Act protects is wider than most employers your size expect: race, color, religious creed, ancestry, age, sex, national origin, non-job-related handicap or disability, possession of a GED rather than a high school diploma, and the use of a guide or support animal — familial status is protected in housing and commercial property, not in employment. Two of those need a gloss — the age protection runs to people 40 and over rather than to age at large, and the Human Relations Commission's 2023 regulations read sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity, so Pennsylvania protects LGBTQ+ employees at four employees whether or not your municipality has its own ordinance. Two exclusions are worth checking at your size: the Act does not cover religious, fraternal, charitable or sectarian corporations unless they are supported in whole or in part by governmental appropriations, reaching them at four only for race, color, age, sex, national origin and non-job-related disability, and its definition of employee excludes agricultural and domestic workers, anyone who resides in the employer's home, and anyone employed by their own parent, spouse or child. Since January 24, 2026 the Act's definition of race has included traits historically associated with race, including hair texture and protective hairstyles such as locs, braids, twists, coils, Bantu knots, afros and extensions, and religious creed has included head coverings and hairstyles historically associated with religious creeds; a grooming rule that impacts either survives a health-and-safety or bona fide occupational qualification defense only if the employer demonstrates all four of possible health-or-safety impairment, nondiscriminatory purpose, specific tailoring to the position and activity, and equal application, but a policy adopted to prevent a hostile work environment needs only to be adopted for nondiscriminatory reasons and applied equally. Audit dress, grooming and appearance policies against whichever of those two tests you are actually relying on, and note that Philadelphia's Fair Practices Ordinance reaches employers with one or more employees, so four is not the floor in the city. (PHRA §§ 4(b), 4(c), 4(bb), 4(cc), 4(dd) and 9(h), 43 P.S. §§ 954 and 959(h), as amended by Act 54 of 2025; PHRA § 5(a) and (k), 43 P.S. § 955(a) and (k); Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission regulations (2023); Phila. Code § 9-1102(1)(h).)

Can I refuse to hire someone in Pennsylvania because of a criminal record or a positive marijuana test?

Statewide, felony and misdemeanor convictions may be considered only to the extent they relate to the applicant's suitability for the position applied for, arrests that produced no conviction are outside that permitted use entirely, and if you decline to hire based in whole or in part on criminal history record information you must notify the applicant in writing. Philadelphia goes much further for any employer with one or more employees in the city, and it changed on January 6, 2026: no criminal-record inquiry during the hiring process except where federal or state law requires it and then only after a conditional offer; felony convictions considerable only where the underlying arrest or release from incarceration, whichever is later, was fewer than seven years ago and misdemeanors fewer than four; summary offenses not at all; and a rejection requires a written provisional decision with a copy of the record used and ten business days for the applicant to respond. The part of that amendment employers will miss is that it is no longer confined to hiring: Philadelphia replaced the application process with an Employment Process defined to include consideration of any aspect of an existing employee's re-employment or continued employment, including promotion, raise or termination, and rewrote the operative subsections so that each now reaches an applicant's or an employee's conviction record. So the seven-year felony window, the four-year misdemeanor window, the summary-offense bar and the written-provisional-decision process now govern what you may do with the criminal history of someone already on your payroll, not only with a candidate, and the amended definition of employee reaches independent contractors, rideshare and delivery-platform drivers and other gig workers. On the marijuana test, Philadelphia makes it an unlawful employment practice to require a prospective employee to submit to marijuana testing as a condition of employment, but the exceptions are broad and easy to miss — law enforcement, positions requiring a commercial driver's license, and positions supervising or caring for children, medical patients, disabled or other vulnerable individuals, plus any testing required by a federal or state law for safety or security, required by a federal contract or grant, or specifically addressed in a valid collective bargaining agreement. Statewide, no employer may refuse to hire or discriminate against someone solely on the basis of their status as an individual certified to use medical marijuana, but you may still discipline for being under the influence at work where the employee's conduct falls below the standard of care normally accepted for that position, and the Act itself bars a patient from performing employment duties at heights or in confined spaces while under the influence and lets you prohibit any task you deem life-threatening or any duty that could result in a public health or safety risk. (18 Pa.C.S. § 9125(b) and (c); Phila. Code §§ 9-3502(4.1), 9-3502(5.1), 9-3504 and 9-3504.1, as amended by Bill No. 250373-A, effective Jan. 6, 2026; Phila. Code § 9-5502; Medical Marijuana Act §§ 510 and 2103(b), 35 P.S. §§ 10231.510 and 10231.2103(b).)

Do I have to post a salary range in a Pennsylvania job ad, and can I ask an applicant what they currently make?

No Pennsylvania statute requires a pay range in a job posting, so an employer importing New York or New Jersey habits is over-complying. Asking about pay history is a different question with a city-specific answer: in Philadelphia it is an unlawful employment practice to inquire about a prospective employee's wage history, require its disclosure, condition an interview or employment on it, or rely on it in setting pay unless the applicant disclosed it knowingly and willingly — and both halves are enforceable, the Third Circuit having upheld the ordinance on February 6, 2020. Do not generalize that to Pittsburgh: its 2017 wage-equity rule sits in the City's own personnel code and restrains City hiring, not private employers. Pennsylvania does impose one affirmative pay-disclosure duty employers routinely miss — at the time of hiring you must notify the employee of the time and place of payment, the rate of pay and the amount of any fringe benefits, and give notice of any change before it takes effect, unless you post those facts conspicuously at your place of business. (43 P.S. § 260.4; Phila. Code § 9-1131(2); Greater Phila. Chamber of Commerce v. City of Philadelphia, 949 F.3d 116 (3d Cir. 2020); Pittsburgh Code § 181.13.)

Do I have to pay out unused PTO when a Pennsylvania employee leaves, and can I deduct for a laptop they never returned?

No Pennsylvania statute creates vacation or PTO, but the Wage Payment and Collection Law folds "separation, vacation, holiday, or guaranteed pay" into "fringe benefits or wage supplements," which the Act defines as wages — so once your written policy or contract promises a payout, that promise is recoverable as wages. Because the entitlement comes from your own document rather than from a statute, a forfeiture or use-it-or-lose-it term only works if the written policy stated the condition clearly, and stated it before the time was earned. The laptop is a separate rule and the answer is usually no: wages must be paid in lawful money or by check except for deductions provided by law, or authorized by Department of Labor and Industry regulation for the convenience of the employee. That phrase reads like a ban on direct deposit, and it is not — a 1975 act permits payment by credit to an account in a bank, credit union or other financial institution designated by the recipient, and Act 161 of 2016 extended the same permission to payroll card accounts, so how you deliver the money is not the problem. The deduction is: the Department's enumerated list of authorized deductions does not include recovering the value of unreturned property, and a signed authorization alone does not fix that, because the regulation's catch-all also requires the Department to find the deduction proper and in conformity with the intent and purpose of the Act. (43 P.S. §§ 260.2a and 260.3(a); Act of Dec. 19, 1975, P.L. 604, No. 173, § 1; Act 161 of 2016; 34 Pa. Code § 9.1, including paragraph (13).)

Are non-compete agreements enforceable in Pennsylvania, and can I ask current employees to sign one?

Yes, but Pennsylvania courts have long disfavored them and enforce them only on four conditions: a restrictive covenant is enforceable only if it is ancillary to an employment relationship, supported by adequate consideration, reasonably limited in duration and geographic extent, and designed to protect the legitimate interests of the employer. Asking a current employee to sign is exactly where employers get caught — a covenant entered into after employment has begun must be supported by new and valuable consideration in the form of a benefit or a beneficial change in employment status, and boilerplate stating that the parties intend to be legally bound does not supply it, even though the Uniform Written Obligations Act makes that language sufficient for ordinary contracts. If you want a non-compete from someone already on the payroll, pair it with something real such as a promotion, a raise or a signing payment, and document it. One profession is now carved out almost entirely: a non-compete entered into on or after January 1, 2025 with a medical doctor, doctor of osteopathy, certified registered nurse anesthetist, certified registered nurse practitioner or physician assistant is void as contrary to public policy unless it runs no more than one year, and even a shorter one is unenforceable if you dismissed the practitioner. That is not the same as having no protection, and the same section says so: you may still recover reasonable expenses directly attributable to the practitioner and accrued within the three years before separation, such as relocation, training and the establishment of a patient base, amortized over a period of up to five years from the date of separation, though not where you dismissed them; and a covenant tied to the sale of an ownership interest, a change of control, or the receipt of an ownership interest as consideration is not voided at all. The Act also runs a duty back at the employer that has nothing to do with the covenant: within 90 days of the departure you must notify patients seen within the past year, where the outpatient relationship ran two years or more, of the departure, how their records transfer and their option to be assigned to a new practitioner. (Socko v. Mid-Atlantic Systems of CPA, Inc., 633 Pa. 555, 126 A.3d 1266 (2015); Fair Contracting for Health Care Practitioners Act, Act 74 of 2024, §§ 3, 4, 5 and 7.)

What do I have to withhold from a Pennsylvania employee's paycheck, and why does my Philadelphia employee have an extra tax?

Beyond federal withholding there are three Pennsylvania layers, and only the first is flat: personal income tax at 3.07% of compensation, a local Earned Income Tax under Act 32, and the employee share of unemployment compensation at 0.07% of gross wages, which unlike the employer tax has no wage cap. The Act 32 local tax is what out-of-state payroll systems get wrong, because the rate is not simply the worksite's — you compare the employee's total resident EIT rate against the work-location non-resident rate and withhold the higher of the two, which means collecting a Residency Certification Form at hire and again whenever someone moves, and you also withhold the Local Services Tax for the worksite, which is capped at $52 a year across every jurisdiction combined and, wherever the combined municipal and school district rate exceeds $10, carries a mandatory exemption for employees earning less than $12,000 in that municipality. Your Philadelphia employee has an extra tax because Philadelphia sits outside the Act 32 system entirely and levies its own Wage Tax remitted directly to the City: from July 1, 2026 it is 3.735% for residents and 3.425% for non-residents who work in the city, and a Philadelphia resident owes the resident rate even when working outside the city. Register with the City within 30 days of employing a Philadelphia resident or anyone performing services in Philadelphia, and report every new hire to the Commonwealth within 20 days of their first day of work. (72 P.S. § 7302; 53 P.S. § 6924.501 et seq.; 43 P.S. § 781.4; Phila. Code ch. 19-1500; 23 Pa.C.S. §§ 4391-4396.)

How much family or medical leave do I have to give a Pennsylvania employee?

Pennsylvania has no state family-leave statute and no state paid family or medical leave insurance, so the federal FMLA at 50 or more employees is the whole of the job-protected entitlement — 12 workweeks in a 12-month period, and only for an employee with 12 months of service and 1,250 hours in the preceding year at a worksite with 50 employees within 75 miles. Below that, nothing at the state level replaces it. Three other things do real work here and are missed because none of them is called family leave. Local paid sick time is the practical substitute and it is usable for a family member's illness: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County each impose a general accrual mandate on different terms, and Pittsburgh's reaches employers of every size, so a ten-person Pittsburgh employer owes accrued paid time even though the FMLA never touches it. Accommodation is the second: the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act reaches employers at four or more employees and is the ONLY accommodation statute that binds below 15, so for a small employer the answer to a medical-leave request is usually a PHRA interactive-process answer rather than an FMLA one, and a finite leave can itself be the accommodation. The ADA and the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act only join at 15. Third, jury service is separately protected — you may not deprive an employee of seniority or benefits for serving. Because the local layer is where the obligation actually sits, the municipality and the county are the first facts to establish, not the last (FMLA, 29 U.S.C. § 2601; PHRA, 43 P.S. §§ 954(b) and 955; 42 Pa.C.S. § 4563; Phila. Code ch. 9-4100; Pittsburgh Code § 626.03; ACHD Rules and Regs. art. XXIV § 2403(B)).