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Sales Tax Calculator

Calculators · Added 15 August 2026

Add sales tax to a price or work backwards from a total that already includes it. Unlike a single-rate tax, a US sales tax rate is stacked from state, county, city and sometimes special district levies — this takes them separately, combines them, and shows how much of the bill each one accounts for.

What do you have?
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Transit, stadium or improvement district levies

How to use the sales tax calculator

  1. 1Choose whether you have a pre-tax price or a total that already includes tax.
  2. 2Enter the amount.
  3. 3Fill in the state rate, and any county, city or special district rates that apply.
  4. 4Read the combined rate, the tax amount and the total.
  5. 5The breakdown shows which jurisdiction receives what.

Examples

Adding tax

Input
$100 · 6% state + 1% county + 0.5% city
Result
$7.50 tax · $107.50 total

Rates stack additively — 7.5% of the pre-tax price, not compounded.

Working backwards from a receipt

Input
$107.50 total at 7.5% combined
Result
$100 pre-tax · $7.50 tax

Divide by 1.075 rather than taking 7.5% off the total.

A high combined rate

Input
$1,200 · 6.25% state + 2% city + 1% transit district
Result
$111 tax · $1,311 total

Combined rates above 9% are common in some metropolitan areas.

About the sales tax calculator

Why the rate depends on the street, not the state

The United States has no national sales tax. Each state sets its own rate, and most also allow counties, cities and special-purpose districts to add their own on top. The result is thousands of distinct combined rates across the country, and two addresses a few blocks apart can genuinely face different totals on an identical purchase.

Special districts are the least visible component. Transit authorities, stadium financing districts, hospital districts and business improvement districts all levy small percentages in various places, and their boundaries rarely follow anything a shopper would notice. This is why sales tax compliance software exists as an industry and why a state-level rate table cannot give a correct answer.

For a consumer checking a receipt, the practical approach is to take the combined rate from the receipt itself or from a lookup for the specific address. For a business, the destination-based sourcing rules that most states apply to remote sales mean the rate depends on where the customer is, not where the seller is, which is what made this a genuinely difficult problem after online selling became normal.

Exclusive pricing, and the arithmetic trap it creates

US retail prices are quoted before tax, which is a meaningful difference from most of the world. A price on a shelf is not what you pay at the till, and the gap is not shown until the transaction is rung up. Visitors from VAT countries find this consistently disorienting.

The convention has one arithmetic consequence worth knowing. Because tax is calculated on the pre-tax price, extracting it from a total requires division rather than subtraction. Taking the tax percentage off the gross total is the single most common error in reverse tax calculations, and it always understates the pre-tax price. At 7.5% the error is about 0.56% of the total — small, but wrong in every case and systematically in the same direction.

The error grows with the rate. At a 20% VAT rate the same mistake is out by 4% of the total, which is why the VAT calculator on this site makes the point about the one-sixth fraction so prominently. The principle is identical here; only the magnitude differs.

Frequently asked questions

How do I work out the pre-tax price from a total?
Divide by one plus the rate, not by subtracting the rate. At 7.5%, a $107.50 total came from $100 pre-tax: 107.50 ÷ 1.075 = 100. Taking 7.5% off $107.50 gives $99.44, which is wrong, because the tax was calculated on the smaller pre-tax figure. The 'remove tax' mode does this correctly.
Do local sales tax rates compound on top of the state rate?
No, they stack additively. A 6% state rate plus a 1% county rate is 7% of the pre-tax price, not 6% followed by 1% on the already-taxed amount. All the jurisdictions tax the same base, which is why the breakdown here applies each rate to the pre-tax figure.
Why doesn't this include a table of state rates?
Because such a table would be wrong within months and misleading immediately. Combined rates change frequently, and they vary between addresses inside the same city depending on which special districts apply — a single 'state rate' is not enough to compute a bill accurately anywhere with local add-ons. Look up the rate for the specific address with your state revenue department, then enter it here.
Is everything subject to sales tax?
No, and exemptions vary widely by state. Groceries, prescription medicines and clothing are exempt or reduced in many states and fully taxed in others. Services are treated inconsistently. Some states run temporary sales tax holidays on specific categories. This calculator applies the rate you give it to the amount you give it; whether the item is taxable at all is a question for your state's rules.
How is this different from the GST or VAT calculators?
The arithmetic is the same family, the context differs. GST in India uses fixed national slab rates, so that calculator offers them as presets. VAT is quoted inclusive, so the VAT calculator centres on extracting it from a gross figure. US sales tax is quoted exclusive and built from multiple local rates, which is what this one handles. Use whichever matches the system you are working in.

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