Sales Tax Calculator: Add or Remove Tax From Any Price

A sales tax calculator saves you from the small but constant arithmetic of adding tax to a price or working out how much tax is buried inside a total. Enter the amount and the rate, and it returns the tax and the final figure. Flip the mode and it does the reverse, pulling the pre-tax price back out of a tax-inclusive total, which is exactly what you need when you have a receipt but not the breakdown.

How to add sales tax

Multiply the pre-tax price by the rate written as a decimal, then add it back on. At an 8.25 percent rate, a 100 item carries 100 times 0.0825, which is 8.25 in tax, for a total of 108.25. The calculator handles the decimal conversion for you, so you can enter the rate as a normal percentage and read off the tax and total without touching a decimal point yourself.

How to remove sales tax

Going the other way trips people up, because you cannot simply subtract the percentage. To strip tax out of a total, divide by one plus the rate as a decimal. A 108.25 total at 8.25 percent is 108.25 divided by 1.0825, which is 100 before tax, leaving 8.25 as the tax. Switch this tool to remove-tax mode and it does that division for you and splits the total into its net price and tax parts.

Rates and the order of operations

Two things are worth getting right. First, use the combined rate that actually applies where the sale happens, since rates vary by location and even by product, and some items are taxed at a different rate or not at all. Second, when a discount is involved, tax is usually charged on the discounted price you really pay, so work out the discount first and apply tax to the lower figure. Getting the order wrong quietly overstates the tax.

Pricing and tax are the plumbing of an online store. Getting found by the people ready to buy is where growth comes from. If you sell online and want more of that high-intent search traffic, request a free SEO audit and we will show you where it is hiding.