percent
$
$
Sales tax is the little number that turns a $20 price tag into $21.65 at checkout, and it trips up shoppers and small business owners alike. Give this calculator any two of the four values (tax rate, pre-tax price, total price, or tax amount) and it figures out the rest. Handy for budgeting before a purchase, double-checking a receipt, or working out what to charge on an invoice.
Sales tax is a percentage that state and local governments tack onto the price of most goods and services. The seller collects it from you at the register and hands it over to the government later. Rates swing wildly by location. Oregon and Delaware charge nothing at the state level. A handful of cities in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama push past 10% once state, county, and city rates stack on top of each other. The same $100 jacket might cost exactly $100 in Portland and over $110 in Birmingham, which is why two prices that look identical online can land very differently in your final cart.
Fill in any two of the four fields and the calculator handles the rest. The common scenarios:
Heading to checkout? Put in the pre-tax price and your local tax rate to see the total and the tax amount.
Working backward from a receipt? Enter the total paid and the tax rate to recover the pre-tax price.
Wondering what rate was actually applied? Type in the pre-tax and total prices.
Sanity-checking an invoice? Enter the pre-tax price and tax rate to verify the tax line.
The use cases are wider than you might think. Most people pull it up when shopping for something expensive (a laptop, a couch, a car), where a few percentage points add real money to the total. Online shoppers reach for it when checkout pages bury the tax until the last step. Freelancers and small business owners run it the other way, working out what to charge so their invoices come out right. Accountants use it during reconciliation when the numbers on a sales report don't line up. And anyone comparing prices across state lines already knows the sticker price is only half the story.
Look up your combined rate before you calculate. The statewide number alone ignores county and city add-ons, which can shift the total by a full percentage point or more.
Not everything is taxed. Many states exempt groceries and prescription drugs, and a few (Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, for example) exempt most clothing.
After the 2018 Wayfair ruling, most online retailers collect sales tax based on your shipping address even when they have no physical store in your state. Expect to see tax line items on almost every online order now.
If you run a business, check your local rate at least once a quarter. Voter initiatives and county adjustments can shift it mid-year, and you don't want to discover the change during an audit.
Five states skip statewide sales tax entirely: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. They make up the revenue elsewhere, whether through income tax, property tax, or in Alaska's case, oil royalties. Cities in Alaska and Montana still charge local sales tax in places, so the "tax-free" label only applies cleanly to Delaware, New Hampshire, and Oregon.
No, though they often get confused. US sales tax hits once, at the final sale to the consumer. VAT (used across Europe and much of the world) is collected in pieces at every stage of production, with businesses claiming back what they paid upstream. The visible difference at the register: VAT is baked into the displayed price, while US sales tax gets added at checkout.
Only if you itemize on Schedule A, and only as an alternative to deducting state and local income tax. You can't claim both. The trade-off makes sense for people in states with no income tax (Texas, Florida, Washington, and a few others) or anyone who made an unusually large purchase that year like a car or a boat. The IRS provides a sales tax deduction calculator if you'd rather not dig through every receipt.
Sales Tax Calculator
Calculate sales tax, net price, gross price, or tax amount. Enter any two values and the rest fills in. Useful for budgeting purchases, checking receipts, or invoicing customers.
https://hexacalculator.com/calculators/finance/sales-tax-calculator
Finance
Corporate Finance