Sales Tax Calculator
Sales Tax Calculator — add tax to any amount or reverse-calculate the pre-tax price from a total. Works for any US state, VAT, or GST rate. Free, no signup.
About Sales Tax Calculator
The Sales Tax Calculator handles both directions of the most common tax question: what is the total once tax is added, and what was the pre-tax price hidden inside a total. Enter the amount, set your rate, pick a currency, and read the answer instantly. The calculator works for any rate — US state sales tax, UK or EU VAT, Australian GST, Indian GST slabs, or any combined state-plus-local rate — because the math is the same everywhere.
Sales tax is fundamentally a consumption tax, but the way it surfaces in everyday life differs by region. In the US, sales tax is set by state and frequently topped up by county and city rates, so the same item can cost different totals in two towns thirty miles apart. Five US states have no statewide sales tax (Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Alaska), while California sits at the top of the state base rates at 7.25%. Across most of the rest of the world, the equivalent is VAT or GST — typically a single national rate that is already included in the listed price. The UK applies 20% standard VAT. Australia and Singapore use GST. India operates a slab system (5%, 12%, 18%, 28%) depending on the goods or service. The calculator does not care about the label — it works on whatever percentage you enter.
The reverse calculation is the part most calculators omit, and it’s the one that matters most for expense reports, accounting, and any situation where a receipt shows a tax-inclusive total without a subtotal. Switch to “Remove tax” mode, enter the total, and the calculator returns the pre-tax amount and the tax that was embedded in it. A $107.25 receipt at 7.25% tax was a $100 purchase plus $7.25 of tax. The formula is total ÷ (1 + rate/100), which is the inverse of the standard add-tax calculation.
A quick worked example. You bought a $50 item in New York City, where the combined state-plus-local rate is 8.875%. In “Add tax” mode, the calculator returns $4.44 of tax and a total of $54.44. If you instead saw $54.44 on your receipt and wanted to know the pre-tax cost — say, for an expense report that requires the subtotal — switch to “Remove tax” mode, enter $54.44 and the same 8.875% rate, and the calculator returns the original $50 (and the same $4.44 of tax). The two modes are exact inverses; running one and feeding the answer into the other will round-trip cleanly.
The tool accepts any rate, which makes it useful well beyond standard sales tax. Use it for VAT reverse-calculation on tax-inclusive European invoices, for separating Indian GST on a tax-inclusive bill, for modelling the all-in cost of an item before you check out, or for any other percentage-of-an-amount problem where the math is the same. Free, no signup, works on any device.
Frequently asked questions
Sales tax is a consumption tax added to the price of goods and services at the point of sale. It is collected by the retailer and remitted to the government. In the US, sales tax is set at the state level (and sometimes county or city level), so the rate varies by location. Most other countries use VAT or GST instead, which work similarly but are typically included in the listed price.
Multiply the pre-tax amount by the tax rate divided by 100. For an $80 item at 7.25%: 80 × 0.0725 = $5.80 in tax, total $85.80. The calculator does this in one step — enter the amount, set the rate, and read the tax and total. The formula is: tax = amount × rate / 100, total = amount + tax.
Divide the total by (1 + rate as a decimal). For a $107.25 total at 7.25%: 107.25 ÷ 1.0725 = $100 pre-tax, leaving $7.25 of tax. Switch the calculator to 'Remove tax' mode and it does this automatically. This is useful for filing expense reports, calculating margins on tax-inclusive receipts, or splitting a bill where the total is known but the subtotal isn't.
US sales tax varies dramatically by state. California is around 7.25% (the highest state base rate), Texas is 6.25%, New York State is 4% (but New York City adds local tax bringing the total to around 8.875%), and Florida is 6%. Five states have no statewide sales tax at all: Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Alaska (though Alaska allows local sales tax). Many states allow counties and cities to add their own rate on top of the state rate, so the actual combined rate can be 2–3 percentage points higher than the state rate alone.