Port Huron's City Income Tax and Its Cross-Border Commuters

The Blue Water Bridge carries a steady stream of traffic from Sarnia, Ontario into Port Huron, over the St. Clair River where Lake Huron drains south. Some who cross it clock in at a job on the Michigan side. And a job on the Michigan side is exactly what Port Huron’s income tax is built to catch.

Here is the part that surprises people: you do not have to live in the city to owe it. Work inside Port Huron but live somewhere else — the township next door, a suburb, or across the border in Canada — and the city takes 0.5% of what you earned within its limits. Live in the city and the rate doubles to 1%, on all your earned income wherever you make it. That is wages and business profit, not Social Security or most pension money.

Port Huron adopted this tax back on January 1, 1969, under Michigan’s Uniform City Income Tax Act, the 1964 law that lets about two dozen cities do the same thing. The Act caps ordinary cities at 1% for residents and 0.5% for everyone else who works there. Only Detroit and Highland Park sit in a higher special tier. So Port Huron charges the standard maximum, no more.

The nonresident half is the quiet workhorse. A whole shift of people who never pay a Port Huron property tax bill still leave a little behind in their paychecks, because the earning happened here. It follows the city line, not your mailing address — a “Port Huron” address out in the surrounding township may sit outside the taxing boundary.

One relief valve: if you live in Port Huron but work in another Michigan city that taxes you, you get a credit so the same wages are not fully taxed twice. The city runs its own return, separate from your state filing, out of the Income Tax Division at 100 McMorran Boulevard. Your own situation can get knotty fast, and a preparer or that office can untangle it better than any short note can.