Sales Tax Calculator

Sales tax is added to the price of goods and services at the till. There is no federal sales tax in the United States; every rate you pay is set by a state, a county, a city, or some combination of the three.

Adding tax to a price: Tax Amount = Pre-Tax Price × (Tax Rate ÷ 100) Total Price = Pre-Tax Price × (1 + Tax Rate ÷ 100)

Working backwards from a total: Pre-Tax Price = Total Price ÷ (1 + Tax Rate ÷ 100) Tax Amount = Total Price − Pre-Tax Price

Worked example, adding: An item costs $85.00 and the rate is 7.5%. Tax = $85.00 × 0.075 = $6.375, rounded to $6.38 Total = $91.38

Worked example, extracting: You paid $107.00 and the rate was 7%. Pre-tax = $107.00 ÷ 1.07 = $100.00 Tax paid = $7.00

Note what happens if you take 7% off the $107 instead: you get $99.51, which is 49 cents wrong. The tax was charged on the smaller pre-tax figure, so dividing is the only way back. That mistake is the single most common error in expense reports.

State rates, state portion only:

The combined rate is the one that matters: Combined Rate = State + County + City

Alaska is the clearest illustration. It has no state sales tax at all, yet plenty of its boroughs charge their own, so the rate at the register is not zero. Going the other way, Louisiana and Tennessee both start from a middling state rate and land near 9.5% once local levies are added, among the highest in the country. Most Americans pay somewhere between 6% and 10%.

For anything delivered, the rate that applies is the one at the destination, not where the seller sits. That is why the same online order costs different amounts depending on where it is shipped.

What is usually exempt: Groceries, prescription drugs and medical equipment escape sales tax in most states, but the definitions are arbitrary and occasionally absurd. Several states tax a rotisserie chicken as prepared food while exempting a raw one. A handful still tax groceries at a reduced rate rather than exempting them, and a few tax them in full.

Sales tax against value-added tax. Sales tax is charged once, at the final sale, and businesses buying for resale are exempt. VAT is charged at every stage with a credit for the tax already paid up the chain. The customer ends up in roughly the same place; the paperwork does not.