Is there a city income tax in Ironwood or Bessemer?

Good news for anyone moving to the western end of the U.P.: there’s no city income tax in Gogebic County. Michigan does let cities charge a local income tax — about two dozen of them do, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw — but none of Gogebic County’s three cities does. Not Bessemer, the county seat; not Ironwood, the biggest city; not Wakefield. In fact, no community anywhere in the Upper Peninsula charges one.

Bessemer is a city, so it could in theory adopt one someday, but it never has. The nearest town that charges a local income tax is Grayling, clear across the peninsula and well over two hundred miles away in the Lower Peninsula — about as far from a city income tax as you can get in Michigan. So as a Gogebic County resident, the income taxes you’ll pay are the federal and the state — Michigan’s flat state income tax — and that’s it. Your local taxes here come through your property tax bill, not your paycheck.