No city income tax in Standish, Au Gres, or Omer

Three cities share Arenac County — Standish, Au Gres, and Omer, the last one so small it is often called Michigan’s smallest city — and not one of them taxes a paycheck. Michigan has allowed city income taxes since 1964, but just 24 cities statewide levy one, and none of them sits on the Sunrise Side.

The nearest that does is Saginaw, and in a county where plenty of people drive south for work, that is the number to know: hold a job inside Saginaw’s city limits and its nonresident rate, 0.75 percent, comes off the top even though you sleep in Standish. Bay City, the shorter commute, charges nothing at all.

At home the arithmetic is plainer. Standish — the county seat since it took the title from Omer in an 1891 vote — runs on property taxes, and so do Au Gres and Omer, same as the townships around them. There is no city return to file, in April or ever.

Omer makes a fitting punchline for the whole subject. The town built a courthouse in a hurry in 1890, lost the county government a year later, and sold the empty building to the Masons for $500. A city that thrifty was never going to invent a wage tax; a few hundred residents and the Rifle River running through the middle of town keep the ambitions modest.