Sales Tax Calculator
Rates are hyper-local, so this tool asks for yours instead of guessing: price and rate give the tax and the total — and it can also strip tax back out of a tax-included price.
Your rate, because there is no other honest way
US sales tax is thousands of overlapping jurisdictions — state, county, city, special districts — and no responsible page guesses yours from a product name. Enter the combined rate you are actually charged and the arithmetic is exact: the tax, and the total the register wants.
Tax = price × rate · Total = price × (1 + rate)
Example: $85 at a 7.25% combined rate: tax $6.16, total $91.16. The reverse line in the result also strips tax back out: an $85 tax-inclusive total at that rate contains a pre-tax price of $79.25 — the figure returns and revenue records actually need.
Why the rate on your receipt looks odd
Rates like 7.25% or 8.875% are sums of layers (say 6% state + 1% county + 0.25% transit district), each voted separately. Two shops a mile apart across a city line can legitimately charge different totals on the same basket — address, not arithmetic, decides.
How this is calculated
Tax = price × entered rate; total = price + tax. The reverse figure divides the entered price by (1 + rate) to show the pre-tax content of a tax-included amount. No rate database is used or implied: the user-entered-rate design is deliberate, since jurisdiction-level rate lookup is a data business this calculator does not pretend to be.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't the site just know my rate?
Because rates attach to the exact delivery or point-of-sale address and change with local votes; a guessed rate would be wrong with confidence, the worst combination. Your receipt or your state's lookup gives the true combined figure in seconds.
Is sales tax the same as VAT?
No. Sales tax is charged once, at the final sale, at the register. VAT is charged at every stage with credits for tax paid — which is why VAT countries can print tax-inclusive prices and this page's reverse mode matters there too.
Do businesses pay sales tax?
Generally not on resale inventory or exempt inputs — they collect it from the final customer instead. The tax a business truly bears is on its own consumed purchases, a distinction accountants guard carefully.
Are groceries and medicine taxed?
It depends entirely on the state — many exempt unprepared food and prescription drugs, some tax them at reduced rates, a few at full freight. Another reason the rate here is yours to enter.
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