No city income tax here in Huron County

Bad Axe got its name from a ruined axe two surveyors found at their campsite in 1861, while they were cutting the first state road through Huron County’s woods. The name stuck, the camp became the county seat, and the town has been explaining itself to visitors ever since. One thing nobody in Bad Axe, Harbor Beach, or Caseville has to explain is a city income tax. Twenty-four Michigan cities tax wages on top of the state’s flat rate, and every one of them is somewhere else.

“Somewhere else” is doing real work up here. The nearest cities that do charge — Saginaw, at 0.75% for nonresidents, and Port Huron, at 0.5% — each sit more than an hour’s drive from Bad Axe, so even most commuters escape. The local tax bill is property tax, collected township by township across a county with more shoreline than stoplights.

Harbor Beach, meanwhile, holds a different distinction. Its breakwater was built to create a refuge from Lake Huron, and the city’s adopted master plan calls the protected basin the world’s largest man-made freshwater harbor. That ranking is the city’s description rather than an independently certified record. A big harbor, a bad axe, and no city income tax — the Thumb keeps its paperwork simple.