No city income tax
Sandusky, Croswell, Marlette, and Brown City levy no city income tax; the nearest cities that do are Port Huron and Lapeer, each taking 0.5% from nonresident workers.
Sanilac County has four cities — Sandusky, Croswell, Marlette, and Brown City — and not one of them taxes a paycheck. That’s four separate chances to join the 24 Michigan cities that levy a local income tax, and four passes. Brown City even declines twice, in a sense. Its city limits straddle the Sanilac–Lapeer county line, and neither side of town touches wages.
The clean sweep ends at the base of the Thumb. Port Huron, 27 miles south of Croswell, has charged 1% on residents and 0.5% on nonresident workers since 1969. Lapeer, off to the southwest, has run the same rates since 1967. The toll runs one way. Drive from Croswell to a job in Port Huron and the half-percent comes out of your check. Drive from Port Huron to a job in Sandusky, though, and there’s nothing on this end to pay.
What Sanilac County’s cities do collect, they collect on the house. A Sandusky homeowner paid about 42 mills on a principal residence in 2025, among the heavier bills in the county. Every one of those mills lands on bricks and acreage, not on the W-2.
Sources
Last reviewed against the listed sources: July 2, 2026.