Louisvilleculture & etiquette

Louisville Metro Government merged the City of Louisville and Jefferson County on 1 January 2003, which means one mayor, one 26-member council and one set of most services across the whole county. What the merger did NOT do is dissolve the small municipalities: roughly 80 home rule cities — Anchorage, Shively, St Matthews, Jeffersontown, Prospect, Middletown and many smaller ones — kept their own governments. They levy their own property taxes, some impose their own occupational licence fees on top of Metro's, several run their own police departments, and the larger ones keep planning and zoning powers. So 'Louisville' is one government for most things and eighty-one for some. Find out which one your address is in before you sign.

The Louisville Metro Revenue Commission collects a local occupational licence tax on compensation earned in Jefferson County, withheld at source. It is structured as a Metro Government share, a Transit Authority of River City share, and a school board share — with the school board portion applying to residents, so a Jefferson County resident pays a higher combined rate than a commuter who works here and lives elsewhere. Add it to Kentucky's flat state rate when you model an offer, and check the current rates with the Revenue Commission, because a home rule city may add its own on top.

Kentucky replaced its graduated brackets with a flat rate in 2019 and then wrote a mechanism into law that steps the rate down when revenue conditions are met. It has moved from 5% to 4.5%, to 4%, and to 3.5% with effect from 1 January 2026 under House Bill 1 of the 2025 session. Because the rate moves, and because official pages have lagged the change, any figure you read in a secondary source may be a year out of date. Confirm the rate for the tax year you are actually filing with the Department of Revenue.

New residents must obtain a Kentucky licence within 30 days, and since licensing moved from the circuit court clerks to the Transportation Cabinet you go to a Driver Licensing Regional Office, not a county courthouse. No testing is required for a valid out-of-state licence. Separately, Kentucky charges a 6% motor vehicle usage tax when a vehicle is first registered here AND an annual ad valorem property tax on the vehicle, assessed on its value and collected at registration renewal by the county clerk. The annual vehicle tax is the one that surprises people from states that do not have it.

The Social Security Administration verifies your status against DHS records that lag entry by one to two weeks, so going in on day two usually wastes the trip. Only work-authorised people qualify; everyone else files IRS Form W-7 for an ITIN. The card is free.

Kentucky's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act only applies where a local government has adopted it — and a local government adopting it must take the whole Act without modification. Louisville-Jefferson County is one of the jurisdictions that has. That means obligations here that simply do not exist in most of Kentucky: the deposit must be held in a separate account whose location the landlord discloses, a move-in condition list must be prepared and signed, and a landlord who has not done those things cannot retain any of the deposit. There is still no statutory cap on the deposit amount anywhere in Kentucky.