Do Cadillac or Manton have a city income tax?

On paper, Cadillac fits the profile of a Michigan income-tax city: an old factory town that kept its industry after the pine ran out, the same family tree as Flint, Jackson, and Muskegon, which all tax the paychecks earned inside their limits. Cadillac never joined them. Neither did Manton, and nothing else in Wexford County could — the 1964 state law behind these taxes applies to cities alone, and only 24 of Michigan’s cities use it.

The nearest one is Big Rapids, about 40 miles down US-131. Work inside its city line and half a percent comes out of a nonresident’s check; the same goes for Grayling, the other one up in the north woods. Stay in Wexford County — the factory floors in Cadillac’s industrial park, the storefronts on Mitchell Street, the shops in Manton — and no city touches your wages.

Cadillac and Manton settled their one real fight back in 1882, when the county seat left Manton for Cadillac in a dispute rough enough that locals still tell it as a story. Taxes never entered into it. Both cities fund themselves the ordinary Michigan way, off the property rolls, and nobody in the county files a city income tax return in April.