Sales Tax Calculator
Add sales tax to a price or extract it from a total, with an editable rate. 100% free, no signup. Everything runs in your browser.
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Enter a price and a tax rate, and this sales tax calculator gives you the tax amount and the total. Flip it into reverse and it extracts the tax from a tax-inclusive total instead, which is the version people actually need when an expense report demands the pre-tax amount hiding inside a receipt.
The rate field is fully editable, with a few US state-level presets that I label clearly as illustrative, because your real combined rate depends on your city and county, not just your state. Everything runs in the browser and nothing you type is uploaded.
How to use
- Enter the pre-tax price.
- Type your tax rate, or start from one of the illustrative state presets and adjust it.
- Read the tax amount and the total including tax.
- For reverse mode, enter the tax-inclusive total and the rate instead.
- Read the extracted tax and the original pre-tax price.
- Edit any figure and everything recalculates as you type.
Why use our sales tax calculator?
The presets are illustrative on purpose, and I want to be straight about why. A US sales tax rate is a stack: state, county, city, and sometimes a special district on top. Two addresses in the same state can differ by two full percentage points. A tool that pretends a dropdown knows your exact combined rate is guessing, so mine hands you an editable rate field and a labeled starting point instead. Check a recent receipt or your city's published rate, type it in, and the math is exact for your actual location.
For a reliable picture of state rates and how much the local additions matter, the Tax Foundation publishes state and combined average sales tax rates every year, and it is where I sanity-check the presets whenever I revisit them.
If you are visiting from the UK or Australia and wondering why nothing in America costs what the shelf says: US sales tax is added at the register, it varies across thousands of overlapping jurisdictions, and retailers advertise one national pre-tax price rather than printing a different label for every town. Coming from a world of VAT and GST inclusive stickers, it feels like a trick. It is not, but it does mean a $9.99 lunch has never once cost $9.99.
Reverse mode is the sleeper feature. Expense reports, bookkeeping and tax filings constantly want the pre-tax figure, and dividing by 1.0825 in your head is nobody's idea of a good time. Enter the receipt total and the rate, and you get the clean split in one step.
UK and EU readers who want this exact tool in inclusive-pricing terms should use the VAT calculator, which speaks 20 percent VAT natively. And if the price you are taxing just came off a sale rack, run it through the discount calculator first, because tax applies to the discounted price you actually pay.
Who is this tool for?
Big-ticket purchases are where mental math fails hardest. On a $1,200 laptop, the difference between a 6 percent rate and a 9.5 percent combined rate is $42, and knowing the register total in advance beats discovering it while the card machine waits. Same story for furniture, appliances and anything else with four digits on the tag.
Freelancers and small businesses use reverse mode weekly. Client lunches, supplies, travel receipts: accounting software and expense policies routinely want the pre-tax amount and the tax shown separately. Extract both here, and if you are the one doing the billing, my invoice generator will put those numbers somewhere presentable.
Travelers heading to the US use it to preview real prices. If you are budgeting a shopping day in a 8.875 percent city, adding nine-ish percent to everything in your head all day is exhausting. Set the rate once and check totals as you go.
Online sellers use it to double-check what their checkout is charging, because a misconfigured tax setting quietly under-collects until the quarterly filing makes it loud.
Frequently asked questions
Because I would be guessing, and confidently guessing about tax is worse than admitting the limits. Combined rates are set by overlapping state, county, city and district authorities and they change. The editable field with your own rate is exact. A geolocated guess is merely plausible.
It divides the total by one plus the rate. A $108.25 receipt at 8.25 percent is $108.25 divided by 1.0825, which gives $100 pre-tax and $8.25 of tax. That division is the step people get wrong by subtracting the percentage instead.
Tradition, logistics and jurisdiction sprawl. The tax depends on where the register sits, rates change midyear, and national advertising wants one price. So the shelf shows the pre-tax price and the register does the local math. Annoying for visitors, permanent nonetheless.
Five states levy no statewide sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon, though some Alaska localities charge their own. That is why the classic advice about buying electronics in Oregon exists.
They are cousins, not twins. Sales tax is charged once at the final sale and quoted on top of the price. VAT and GST are collected through the supply chain and baked into the displayed price. The math here works for both directions, but inclusive-price countries usually want the VAT version.
After, in the normal case. Tax applies to what you actually pay, so a $100 item at 20 percent off is taxed on $80. Apply the discount first, then the rate, and the register should agree with you.
No. Prices, rates and totals stay in your browser, the arithmetic runs locally, and nothing is stored or transmitted. Your receipts are your business.