There is no self-employed mortgage. The 2026 conforming ceiling in Montgomery County is $832,750 on a one-unit house, and it is the same figure for a W-2, a Schedule C and a K-1. FHA stops at $630,200 in this metro for everyone. The realty transfer tax is 2.000% at every address in the county and does not care what anybody does for a living. What changes is the file the lender reads, and one piece of that file is local in a way most people only discover in their first April here.
The return nobody withholds for you
Under Act 32, a Pennsylvania resident’s earned income tax is levied twice over — by the municipality where you live and by the school district where you live. The two rates are added into one resident rate, and every municipality has a six-digit code that routes the money. An employer handles it by withholding. Somebody self-employed handles it by paying quarterly estimates directly to the collector.
Berkheimer collects for 59 of Montgomery County’s 62 municipalities. The exceptions are Douglass, New Hanover and Upper Frederick, the three townships in Boyertown Area School District, which pay the Berks bureau instead. The return is short. It is also easy to forget, because nothing arrives to remind you.
The rate depends on the township, and the range is wide
| Place | Total resident rate |
|---|---|
| Norristown | 2.10% |
| Skippack Township | 1.65% |
| Cheltenham Township | 1.50% |
| Collegeville, Schwenksville, Trappe | 1.40% |
| Plymouth Township | 1.10% |
| Abington, Lansdale, Pottstown, Upper Dublin, Horsham | 1.00% |
| Lower Merion Township | 0.00% |
| Upper Merion Township | 0.00% |
Forty-five of the county’s sixty-two municipalities sit at exactly 1.00%, fifteen are higher, and two are at nothing at all. Lower Merion and Upper Merion levy no earned income tax municipally and their school districts levy none either. On $150,000 of household earned income, that is the difference between $0 and $3,150 a year against Norristown’s rate, which is the single largest local money difference between two Montgomery County addresses fifteen minutes apart.
Norristown’s 2.10% comes from a 1.60% municipal levy, more than three times what most townships charge. Perkiomen Valley is the one school district in the county at 0.90% school earned income tax, which drags Collegeville, Trappe, Schwenksville, Skippack, Perkiomen and Lower Frederick to 1.40% or above no matter what their townships do.
Low-income exemptions are not uniform either: Narberth exempts the first $12,000, Lansdale and Towamencin $5,000, Upper Moreland $4,000, Cheltenham $2,000, and every other municipality in the county exempts nothing.
If somebody in the household works in Philadelphia
Act 32 does not govern the Philadelphia side. Employers there withhold the city’s non-resident wage rate — 3.425% from 1 July 2026 — and remit it to the city directly. Pennsylvania’s Local Tax Enabling Act credits that against the home municipality’s tax, and because 3.425% is higher than any Montgomery County resident rate, the credit generally absorbs the whole local bill. The excess is not refunded and Philadelphia holds no reciprocal agreement with anybody. For a household with a city earner, the Norristown-versus-Lower-Merion gap largely disappears; for income earned inside the county, it does not.
What the lender will be reading
Personal returns, business returns, K-1s, a year-to-date profit and loss statement, business bank statements. How many years, in what form, and what gets added back are underwriting questions, and the lender answers them file by file. Nothing on this site takes an application, quotes a rate or decides whether a loan happens.
The one thing worth doing early is getting the local return in order alongside the federal ones. It is a small document that turns up in an underwriting file more often than people expect.
The numbers that stay put
Conventional runs to $832,750 on one unit in Montgomery County, $1,066,250 on two and $1,288,800 on three. FHA stops at $630,200 with a 3.5% minimum down under program rules, a 1.75% upfront mortgage insurance premium and 0.55% annually in the 2026 schedule. All read 26 August 2026 and all confirmed by the lender before they matter.
Property tax is the assessment times the millage, and the assessment is a 1996 number. The Common Level Ratio factor for documents dated 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027 is 3.36, so assessed value is about market value divided by 3.36. Pick two towns and the millage moves: Upper Merion about 36.60, Horsham 44.837, Abington 53.397, Cheltenham 73.483.
What to do next
Have the township, the price, and a straight answer about how the business files. Call the line, or put it in the form and send it along, and a licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender calls you back to say what the file would need to show. Tidy books beat a good explanation every time.