Sales Tax Calculator
Add sales tax, or take it back out of a total, with state and local rates combined the way they are actually applied.
State or base rate 6.25%
Local rate 2.25%
Combined rate 8.5%
Price before tax $250.00
Sales tax $21.25
Total charged $271.25
Tax is added to the $250.00 you entered. The two rates are added
together first and applied once, which is why 6.25% and 2.25% is 8.5%
rather than being applied in sequence.
Sales tax collected is not revenue. It is money held on behalf of the
tax authority, and it belongs out of every margin and profit figure.
Output is valid and updates as you type.
Fix the highlighted fields to update the output.
Adding sales tax is a multiplication. Taking it back out of a total is a division, and that is where the mistakes happen: a 108 total at 8 percent contains 8 of tax, not 8.64, because the tax was charged on 100 and not on 108.
This does both directions, and it adds the state and local rates together before applying them, which is how they actually work.
How to use
- Put in the amount.
- If that amount is a total that already includes tax, tick the box. The tax is then divided back out.
- Put in the base rate and the local rate. They are added and applied once.
Example
A 250 sale at 6.25 percent state and 2.25 percent local:
State or base rate 6.25%
Local rate 2.25%
Combined rate 8.5%
Price before tax $250.00
Sales tax $21.25
Total charged $271.25Run it the other way, with 271.25 and the box ticked, and you get the 250 back. Taking 8.5 percent off 271.25 instead would give 248.19, which is wrong by nearly two dollars and wrong in the same direction every time.
Pitfalls
Rates are added, not applied in sequence. A 6 percent state rate and a 2 percent city rate is 8 percent of the price. Applying 6 percent and then 2 percent to the result gives 8.12 percent, which over a year of invoices is a real discrepancy.
Collected tax is not revenue. It is money you hold for the tax authority. It does not belong in your revenue, your margin or your profit, and putting it there is the most common reason a small business overstates how well it is doing.
Nexus decides whether you charge at all. Whether you owe sales tax in a state depends on your presence and your sales there, and it changed substantially after the 2018 Wayfair decision in the United States. This calculates a rate you supply; it cannot tell you whether that rate applies to you.
Shipping is sometimes taxable and sometimes not. It varies by state, and by whether the shipping is separately stated. If it is taxable where you are, include it in the amount.
Rounding is per invoice, not per line. Most authorities expect the tax on the invoice total rather than the sum of tax rounded per line. The difference is cents, and the cents are what reconciliations catch.
Compatibility
Arithmetic in the browser: nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored. The share link carries the figures, which is useful for sending a quote breakdown to a customer.
Rates are fields rather than a built-in table on purpose. United States sales tax has thousands of jurisdictions and they change; a table on a page is a table that is wrong. Take the combined rate from your own filing, or from your state’s lookup, and put it here.
The tool accepts rates to three decimal places, which covers the districts that use fractions like 0.375 percent.