No city income tax in Tawas City, East Tawas, or Whittemore
Tawas City, East Tawas, and 414-person Whittemore charge no city income tax; the nearest city that does is Saginaw, over an hour south.
Whittemore counted 414 people at the 2020 census — one of the smallest incorporated cities in Michigan, and on paper every bit as much a city as Detroit. The difference shows on a pay stub. Detroit taxes residents’ income at 2.4%; Whittemore, like Tawas City and East Tawas over on the bay, taxes it at exactly nothing. Iosco County’s three cities all sit outside the group of twenty-four Michigan cities that charge a local income tax.
On the Sunrise Side, that group feels remote anyway. Its closest member is Saginaw, more than an hour south along the Lake Huron shore, so the nonresident commuter rates that clip paychecks downstate rarely reach anyone here. Local services run instead on the ordinary stack of property-tax mills — city, county, schools — plus whatever the summer crowd leaves behind on Newman Street in East Tawas.
The arithmetic stays easy: Michigan’s flat state rate, the federal bill, and nothing extra for living in a city of 414 souls.
Sources
Last reviewed against the listed sources: July 2, 2026.