Add or remove sales tax and VAT

About the Sales Tax Calculator

Calculate sales tax or VAT in either direction. Add tax to a net price to see the final total, or extract the tax from a gross (tax-inclusive) amount to see the underlying net price. Works with any tax rate and any currency.

How to use the Sales Tax Calculator

1. 01Enter the amount you're working with.
2. 02Type the tax rate as a percentage (e.g. 8.25 or 20).
3. 03Choose Add tax (net → gross) or Extract tax (gross → net).
4. 04See the net amount, tax, and total side by side.

Why use our Sales Tax Calculator

• 01

  Two modes

  Add tax on top of a net price, or pull the tax out of a tax-inclusive total.

• 02

  Any rate, any currency

  Works for US sales tax, UK/EU VAT, GST, and more.

• 03

  Clear breakdown

  Net amount, tax amount, and total are always shown together.

• 04

  Private

  Calculations happen in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.

How do you remove sales tax from a total?

Adding tax is straightforward: multiply the net amount by one plus the rate. £100 at 20 percent gives £120. Extracting tax from a gross figure requires division, not subtraction, because the tax was calculated on the net amount rather than on the total. The correct operation is gross ÷ (1 + rate), so £120 ÷ 1.20 = £100 net, with £20 of tax. Subtracting 20 percent of the gross gives £96, understating the net by £4 and the tax by the same amount — an error of 4 percent that compounds across a set of expenses and produces a reclaim figure that will not reconcile. A useful shortcut for the 20 percent case is that the VAT element of a gross figure is one sixth of it, because 20/120 simplifies to 1/6. For 5 percent the fraction is 1/21, and for other rates the division is the reliable method.

Sales tax and VAT are not the same mechanism

They produce a similar-looking line on a receipt and work quite differently underneath. US sales tax is levied once, at the final retail sale to a consumer, by state and local jurisdictions — there is no federal sales tax. Rates combine state, county, city and sometimes special district components, which is why a single city can have a rate that differs across the street and why there are several thousand distinct rates nationally. Prices are conventionally displayed excluding tax, and the tax is added at the till. VAT, used across the UK, EU and much of the world, is charged at every stage of production, with businesses reclaiming the VAT they paid on inputs so that the net effect falls on the final consumer. Prices to consumers are typically displayed including VAT, which is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions. That difference explains a persistent traveller's surprise: a US shelf price is not what you pay, and a UK one is.

Rates, exemptions and where the arithmetic stops helping

Real-world tax rarely applies one rate to everything. The UK has a standard 20 percent rate, a reduced 5 percent rate for domestic energy and certain goods, and a zero rate covering most food, children's clothing and books — zero-rated is not the same as exempt, since zero-rated businesses can still reclaim input VAT and exempt ones cannot. EU member states set their own rates within agreed bands, and reduced rates vary widely by country and category. US sales tax exempts groceries in many states but not all, and clothing thresholds differ. Digital services are taxed where the customer is located under both EU and UK rules, which affects cross-border sellers. All of this means the calculation here is correct arithmetic on whatever rate you supply, and choosing the right rate for a specific product in a specific place is the harder part. For anything with tax liability attached, confirm the rate against the relevant tax authority.

Extracting tax from a gross amount

Never subtract the rate from the gross figure — at 20% that understates the net by 4%.

Frequently asked questions