Sales Tax Calculator — Add or Remove Sales Tax by State Rate

Sales tax is the slice the government adds at the register on most retail purchases in the United States, and what makes it uniquely confusing is that there is no single national rate. Each state sets its own, and then counties, cities, transit districts and special taxing zones stack their own pieces on top — so the rate that lands on your receipt depends entirely on the street address where the sale is completed. This calculator does two things specific to that mess: it adds tax to a shelf price so you know the real checkout total, and it removes tax to recover the pre-tax amount buried inside a tax-inclusive total.

The forward math is short. Tax = price × (rate ÷ 100), and total = price × (1 + rate ÷ 100). A $200 pair of headphones in a city with an 8.25% combined rate adds 200 × 0.0825 = $16.50 of tax, for a $216.50 total. To strip tax back out of a $108.25 receipt, you divide by 1.0825, not subtract — pre-tax = 108.25 ÷ 1.0825 = $100.00, leaving $8.25 of tax. (The same divide-don't-subtract trick powers any reverse-percentage problem; our Percentage Calculator covers that mechanic in general, and our Discount Calculator handles percent-off sale pricing.)

The part this page exists for is rate variation and the no-tax states. Five states levy no statewide sales tax at all — remember them with the acronym NOMAD: New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Delaware. There's a catch worth knowing: Alaska has no state tax but lets boroughs and towns charge their own, so places like Juneau and Kodiak still ring up local sales tax even though the state rate is zero. The other four — New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana and Delaware — are genuinely tax-free at the register statewide. In a NOMAD state (Alaska aside), set the rate to 0 and your total equals the shelf price. At the other extreme, combined state-plus-local rates climb past 10% in parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Washington and Alabama, where Louisiana and Tennessee routinely top the national list.

The rate is also not the whole story — the tax base matters. Many states deliberately exempt or reduce tax on necessities: unprepared groceries, prescription drugs, and in a handful of states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Minnesota) most clothing. So a single blanket rate may overcount tax on a cart that mixes a taxable gadget with exempt milk and medicine. A few states also run periodic sales-tax holidays — back-to-school weekends where clothing, supplies or electronics are temporarily untaxed.

Use this calculator to size up the true cost before you buy, split a tax-inclusive total for an expense report, audit a receipt's tax line, or recover a pre-tax price when all you have is the after-tax figure. Enter the amount and your local combined rate, choose add or remove, and it shows the tax, the total and the pre-tax amount with the steps spelled out.