Enter the purchase amount and the sales‑tax rate to see the tax amount and total cost.
A 149.99 item in a jurisdiction with a combined rate of 8.25 percent.
Tax 12.37, total 162.36.
In much of the United States the rate that applies to a sale is the sum of several layers — state, county, city, and sometimes a special district — and it is set by the delivery address, not the seller’s address. That is why two orders for the same item can carry different tax. This calculator takes one number, so add your layers together first. Your state revenue department publishes the current combined rate by address; look it up rather than reusing a rate from memory, because local components change.
To strip tax out of a total, divide rather than subtract the percentage. On a 162.36 total at 8.25 percent, the pre-tax amount is 162.36 ÷ 1.0825 = 149.99. Subtracting 8.25 percent of 162.36 instead gives 148.97, which is 1.02 wrong — a mistake that compounds quickly across an expense report. If you are reclaiming tax or splitting a receipt into net and tax lines, use the division.
Rate is only half the question; the other half is whether the item is taxable at all. Groceries, prescription medicine, clothing and digital goods are treated differently across jurisdictions, and some are exempt or taxed at a reduced rate. If a receipt does not match this calculation, the usual cause is a mixed basket where part of the order was exempt, not an arithmetic error.
This tool shows two decimal places. Real point-of-sale systems apply rounding rules per line item or per invoice depending on the jurisdiction, so a multi-line receipt can differ from a single calculation on the basket total by a cent or two. For a single item the figures agree.
Use your state or provincial revenue authority’s official rate lookup and search by the full delivery address, not just the city, because special districts can change the rate within a single town. Add every applicable layer together and enter the combined figure here. Rates are revised on set dates, so a figure you noted last year may no longer be current.
Divide the total by one plus the rate expressed as a decimal. At 8.25 percent that is dividing by 1.0825. Subtracting the percentage from the total gives a number that is close but wrong, and the error grows with the rate.
After. Tax applies to what the customer actually pays, so apply the discount first and enter the reduced price here. Manufacturer coupons are sometimes treated differently from store discounts in certain jurisdictions, which is the one exception worth checking if the receipt does not match.
The arithmetic is the same for any single-rate tax added to a price, so entering a VAT or GST rate works. The difference is presentational: VAT-inclusive pricing is the norm in many countries, in which case the backwards calculation above is the one you want, since the displayed price already contains the tax.
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