Sales Tax / VAT Calculator

Because any such table would be wrong for many users on the day it was published and wrong for more users every year after. Rates differ by jurisdiction down to city level, differ by product (food, clothing and services are often treated differently), and are changed by legislation. The legally correct rate for your transaction is on your invoice or your tax authority's current guidance — enter that rate and this calculator's arithmetic is exact, rather than a stale table's guess.

Because the tax was calculated on the net price, and the gross contains that tax. Subtracting 18% from a $118 gross removes $21.24, but the actual tax inside $118 at an 18% rate is $18 (18% of the $100 net). Division by (1 + rate) reverses the original multiplication exactly; subtraction of a percentage does not.

Sales tax is charged once, at the final sale to the consumer. VAT is charged at every stage of production and distribution, with each business reclaiming the VAT it paid on its inputs, so the total embedded in the final price equals the rate applied to the final value. For the arithmetic on a single price — adding the tax or extracting it — the two behave identically, which is why one calculator covers both.

If both are charged on the same net price, add the rates and enter the sum — a 6% state tax and a 2% city tax on the same base is an 8% calculation. If the second tax is charged on the price including the first tax (compounded), run the calculator twice, once per rate, feeding the total of the first run into the second.

Business-to-business invoices conventionally show the net price, the tax rate, the tax amount and the gross total as separate lines — exactly the three figures this calculator reports — because the buyer may need the tax amount separately for their own records or reclaims. Consumer shelf prices, by contrast, are legally required to be tax-inclusive in many countries. The calculator gives you all three numbers; your context decides which leads.