VAT / Sales Tax Calculator
Calculate VAT, GST, or sales tax instantly. Add or remove tax from any price with automatic rate detection for 30+ countries.
Denne kalkulatoren er ikke oversatt til Norsk bokmål ennå.
Vi viser foreløpig versjonen på Engelsk mens vi fullfører oversettelsen.
No predefined rates. Use a custom rate.
USD
Price with Sales Tax
$100.00
Sales Tax Amount
$0.00
Effective rate
0%
Sales Tax = $100.00 × 0% = $0.00
Price with Sales Tax = $100.00 + $0.00 = $100.00
Denne kalkulatoren er kun til informasjonsformål. Det er ikke økonomisk rådgivning.
VAT calculator. Add tax to a net price, or pull it out of a gross one.
This calculator adds tax to a price that has none, or works backwards from a tax-inclusive total to the net price and the tax hidden inside it. Pick a country and a rate tier, or type your own percentage, and it reports the net figure, the tax and the gross.
What the Calculator Carries, and Why the United States Box Is Empty
Choose United States in the country box and the tier list comes up with nothing in it. An italic line appears underneath — "No predefined rates. Use a custom rate." — and the three cards read 100.00, 0.00 and 0% until you type a percentage yourself. That is deliberate, not a gap someone forgot to fill. The country list holds 38 entries covering 39 tax systems, and the United States and Brazil are the two that arrive with no rates attached, because neither country has a single national rate that could be attached.
United States sales tax is not a national tax. It is set by states, counties, cities and special districts, and the arithmetic changes as you drive. The Tax Foundation's figures for 1 January 2026 put statewide rates from 2.90% in Colorado up to 7.25% in California, with five states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — charging no statewide sales tax at all. Add the local layer and Louisiana averages 10.11% combined, Tennessee 9.61%, Washington 9.51%, while Alabama's local maximum reaches 11.00%; nationwide the population-weighted average combined rate is 7.53%. Fonoa counts more than 12,000 distinct taxing jurisdictions and hundreds of rate changes a year. None of that fits in a dropdown, and this page does not pretend otherwise: there is no address lookup, no ZIP-code table and no state list here. What the calculator does instead is take the figure you already have. Select Custom in the rate box, type your combined rate, and every result on the page behaves exactly as it does for a country with fixed statutory tiers.
Everywhere else on the list the rate is a matter of statute, which is precisely why a dropdown works. A value-added tax or its GST equivalent is now in force in more than 170 countries, and the United States is the conspicuous holdout among large economies. Inside the European Union the shape of those rates is set by directive rather than by each government's preference: the standard rate cannot go below 15%, member states may run one or two reduced rates no lower than 5%, an intermediate parking rate must stay at 12% or above, and the surviving super-reduced and zero rates are historical derogations. That is why the standard rates below cluster between 19% and 27% instead of scattering.
The other thing worth settling before you type anything is that taking tax off a price is a different operation from subtracting the percentage. A gross total of 100 at 21% is 82.64 net with 17.36 of tax — not 79. Subtracting 21 from 100 charges the rate against the wrong base, and the error grows with both the rate and the ticket size: at 23% on a 1,000 invoice line the subtraction method reports 770 where the correct net is 813.01, a miss of 43.01 on one line.
Here is the full list as the tool carries it today, with the name the tax goes by on the result cards and the tiers you can select. Read it as what the calculator will apply, with the national tax authority as the last word.
| Country | Tax is called | Standard tier | Other tiers in the tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | IVA | 21% | 10%, 4% |
| Spain | IGIC (Canary Islands, via Tax type) | 7% | 3%, 0% |
| Germany | MwSt | 19% | 7% |
| France | TVA | 20% | 10%, 5.5%, 2.1% |
| Italy | IVA | 22% | 10%, 5%, 4% |
| Portugal | IVA | 23% | 13%, 6% |
| Netherlands | BTW | 21% | 9% |
| Belgium | BTW/TVA | 21% | 12%, 6% |
| Poland | VAT | 23% | 8%, 5% |
| Romania | TVA | 21% | 11% |
| Bulgaria | ДДС (DDS) | 20% | 9% |
| Greece | ΦΠΑ (FPA) | 24% | 13%, 6% |
| Hungary | ÁFA | 27% | 18%, 5% |
| Sweden | Moms | 25% | 12%, 6% |
| Switzerland | MWST | 8.1% | 2.6%, 3.8% lodging |
| Ukraine | ПДВ (PDV) | 20% | 14%, 7% |
| United Kingdom | VAT | 20% | 5%, 0% |
| United States | Sales Tax | — | none — Custom rate only |
| Argentina | IVA | 21% | 10.5%, 27% increased |
| Mexico | IVA | 16% | 0% |
| Brazil | ICMS | — | none — Custom rate only |
| Canada | GST/HST | 5% | — |
| India | GST | 18% | 5%, 12%, 28% luxury |
| Japan | 消費税 (shohizei) | 10% | 8% |
| South Korea | 부가세 (bugase) | 10% | — |
| China | VAT (增值税) | 13% | 9%, 6% |
| Indonesia | PPN | 11% | — |
| Vietnam | VAT | 10% | 5% |
| Thailand | VAT | 7% | — |
| Malaysia | SST | 10% | 8% service |
| Pakistan | Sales Tax | 18% | — |
| Bangladesh | VAT (ভ্যাট) | 15% | — |
| Saudi Arabia | VAT | 15% | — |
| Egypt | VAT | 14% | — |
| Israel | Ma'am (מע"מ) | 18% | — |
| Türkiye | KDV | 20% | 10%, 1% |
| Australia | GST | 10% | — |
| Russia | НДС (NDS) | 22% | 10% |
| Hong Kong | N/A — no VAT or GST | — | 0%, its only tier |
Two rows are worth pausing on. Hungary's 27% is the steepest standard rate on the list, ahead of Sweden's 25%, Greece's 24% and the 23% shared by Portugal and Poland; Canada's federal 5% GST is the gentlest, with Thailand and the Canary Islands' IGIC next at 7%. And Hong Kong is here precisely because it levies no VAT or GST: its one tier is the zero rate, so a tax card reading zero there is the right answer rather than a broken one.
Percentages that come off a price, rather than going on to one, are handled elsewhere on the site. A single sale percentage goes to the discount calculator, which is also where the sequencing rule gets its own explanation — whether the tax lands on the price before or after the markdown depends on who is footing the offer, the shop or the brand. A sale with a code stacked on top of it goes to the multiple discounts calculator. And percentage arithmetic with no price involved at all is the percentage calculator.
Add or Remove: Which Mode the Price in Front of You Needs
One question decides the mode, and it is not about your country — it is about the number you are holding. Does that number already contain the tax? If it does, you want Remove Tax. If it does not, you want Add Tax. The price field answers it for you as you switch: its label reads Price without tax in one mode and Price with tax in the other, so a label that disagrees with the figure in your hand is the fastest signal that the toggle is the wrong way round.
The reason the question comes up so often on an English-language page is a display convention that splits the world in two. United States shelf prices and online carts are quoted before tax, which is added at checkout, so an American shopper almost always starts from a net figure and needs Add. In most VAT countries the advertised price is the price you pay: the tax is already inside the number on the shelf, on the menu and on the hotel booking, so anyone reading a European receipt starts from a gross figure and needs Remove. The Sales Tax Institute's comparison makes the same split — VAT is a multi-stage tax with the consumer's share baked into the retail price, sales tax a single-stage charge added at the till.
Add Tax is the mode for the questions that run forwards. You are invoicing a client and the agreed fee is net, so you need the line total to bill: 1,000 at 23% is 230 of tax and 1,230 to collect. You are pricing a job and want the customer-facing figure. You are budgeting a United States cart and know your combined rate, so 45.50 at 7.7% comes to 49.00 all in. You are checking a supplier's quote that arrives net and want to know the cash the purchase will actually consume.
Remove Tax is the mode for everything that arrives already taxed. An expense claim that wants the net cost on one line and the recoverable tax on another. A receipt from a trip abroad where you want to know how much of the meal was tax. A gross quote you suspect was built on the standard rate when the reduced one applied — run it back and see whether the net looks like the figure you were promised. An accounting entry that needs the two components separated, which is the everyday case: on a 121 total at 21% the split is exactly 100.00 and 21.00.
And when neither mode fits, what you are usually missing is the rate rather than the direction — if you hold the net and the gross but not the percentage between them, the percentage calculator is the tool that returns it.
The Two Formulas, and the Fraction That Beats Both
- = Price before tax — the figure you type in Add mode, the figure the calculator returns in Remove mode
- = Price after tax — the figure the calculator returns in Add mode, the figure you type in Remove mode
- = The rate as a percentage (21 for 21%), taken from the country tier you select or from the Custom field
- = Tax amount — the gross minus the net, reported to two decimals
- = The tax fraction of a gross price, r divided by 100 plus r — one sixth at 20%, one fifth at 25%
Adding tax is a multiplication and removing it is a division, and that asymmetry is the source of nearly every wrong answer on the subject. In Add mode the calculator multiplies the net price by the rate, rounds that tax to two decimals, then adds the two together: 59.99 at 21% gives 12.5979 of tax, which reports as 12.60, and a gross of 72.59. In Remove mode it divides the gross by 1 plus the rate as a decimal, rounds the net to two decimals, and gets the tax by subtraction rather than by multiplying anything: 121 ÷ 1.21 is 100.00, and 121 − 100.00 is 21.00 of tax. Deriving the tax that way has a useful consequence — for a price typed to the cent, the net and the tax always add back to the gross you entered, with no stray cent left over.
The division is the half people get wrong. The rate is charged on the net figure, and the net is the smaller of the two, so a percentage of the gross is always less than the same percentage of the net. Here is what that difference costs.
| Gross price | Rate | Net (divide by 1 + rate) | Tax | Subtracting the % instead | Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5% | 95.24 | 4.76 | 95 | 0.24 |
| 100 | 10% | 90.91 | 9.09 | 90 | 0.91 |
| 100 | 19% | 84.03 | 15.97 | 81 | 3.03 |
| 100 | 20% | 83.33 | 16.67 | 80 | 3.33 |
| 100 | 21% | 82.64 | 17.36 | 79 | 3.64 |
| 120 | 20% | 100.00 | 20.00 | 96 | 4.00 |
| 121 | 21% | 100.00 | 21.00 | 95.59 | 4.41 |
| 59.99 | 21% | 49.58 | 10.41 | 47.39 | 2.19 |
| 199.99 | 20% | 166.66 | 33.33 | 159.99 | 6.67 |
| 1,000 | 23% | 813.01 | 186.99 | 770 | 43.01 |
Read the last row as the argument for never doing this in your head. On a single 1,000 line at 23%, subtraction overstates the tax by 43.01 and understates the net by the same amount — enough to fail a reconciliation and, repeated across a quarter of invoices, enough to matter to an accountant.
There is a third formula that is easier than either of the two above, and it is the one accountants actually use. The tax inside a gross price is a fixed fraction of that price, and the fraction depends only on the rate.
At 20% that is 20/120, which cancels to one sixth — the figure UK accounting guidance calls the VAT fraction, and the reason a 20%-inclusive price can be split by dividing by six. At 10% it is one eleventh, which is why Australian guidance on 10% GST tells you to divide a GST-inclusive total by 11 rather than take 10% of it. At 5% it is one twenty-first. And at 25% it is exactly one fifth, the only rate in the whole table that lands on a clean, memorable fraction: a 25% Swedish price is four fifths net and one fifth tax, full stop.
Every other rate produces a fraction that is exact but not tidy: at 21% the tax is 21/121 of the gross, or 17.3554%; at 23% it is 18.6992%; at 19% 15.9664%; at 27% 21.2598%. The reference table below sets out sixteen rates in common use around the world, most of them selectable here, with a couple carried because superseded rates still surface on old invoices — 7.7% is what Switzerland charged before its current 8.1%. Each row gives the divisor, the tax share and the fraction, so a receipt can be split without opening the calculator at all.
One cross-check the fraction makes trivial: a 199.99 UK total at 20% should contain 199.99 ÷ 6 = 33.3316 of tax, and the calculator reports 33.33 with 166.66 net. The two methods agree to the cent, which is the point of having both.
A note on reversibility, since it is the first thing people test. Add 21% to 59.99, get 72.59, then remove 21% from 72.59, and 59.99 comes back exactly; the same closes for 100 at 19% through 119, for 33.33 at 20% through 40, for 7.77 at 23% through 9.56, and for 1,299 at 21% through 1,571.79. Five clean round trips is not a proof, though, and it should not be read as one: both directions round to the cent independently, so on some prices the return journey can land a cent from where it started.
Remove-Tax Reference: Common Rates as a Share of the Gross
| Rate | Divide the gross by | Tax as % of gross | Tax fraction | Net as % of gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 1.0500 | 4.7619% | 1/21 | 95.2381% |
| 7% | 1.0700 | 6.5421% | 7/107 | 93.4579% |
| 7.7% | 1.0770 | 7.1495% | 77/1077 | 92.8505% |
| 10% | 1.1000 | 9.0909% | 1/11 | 90.9091% |
| 12% | 1.1200 | 10.7143% | 3/28 | 89.2857% |
| 15% | 1.1500 | 13.0435% | 3/23 | 86.9565% |
| 17% | 1.1700 | 14.5299% | 17/117 | 85.4701% |
| 18% | 1.1800 | 15.2542% | 9/59 | 84.7458% |
| 19% | 1.1900 | 15.9664% | 19/119 | 84.0336% |
| 20% | 1.2000 | 16.6667% | 1/6 | 83.3333% |
| 21% | 1.2100 | 17.3554% | 21/121 | 82.6446% |
| 22% | 1.2200 | 18.0328% | 11/61 | 81.9672% |
| 23% | 1.2300 | 18.6992% | 23/123 | 81.3008% |
| 24% | 1.2400 | 19.3548% | 6/31 | 80.6452% |
| 25% | 1.2500 | 20.0000% | 1/5 | 80.0000% |
| 27% | 1.2700 | 21.2598% | 27/127 | 78.7402% |
Worked Cases, Both Directions
Adding 21% to a net 59.99: why the total is 72.59
A freelancer's line item is 59.99 net and the client is in Spain, so mainland IVA at the 21% standard tier applies. Set the toggle to Add Tax, pick Spain, leave the Tax type on IVA and the rate on Standard, and type 59.99 into Price without tax.
The cards report 12.60 of IVA and 72.59 to invoice. The exact product is 59.99 × 0.21 = 12.5979, which reports as 12.60, and the gross is 59.99 + 12.60. Note what the tax card is not: 12.60 is 21% of the net, not 21% of the 72.59 total, and those are two different sums. If you do need the tax as a share of the invoice total, the reference table has that share at 17.3554% — and 72.59 × 0.173554 is 12.60 again, which is the same answer arrived at from the other end.
The breakdown accordion prints that same working — IVA = 59.99 × 21% = 12.60, then Price with IVA = 59.99 + 12.60 = 72.59 — which is the panel to screenshot when a client queries the invoice.
Removing 21% from 121: the split that closes exactly
This is the case to run first if you want to convince yourself the division is right. Switch to Remove Tax, keep Spain on 21%, and enter 121 into Price with tax.
Net 100.00, IVA 21.00. Clean, and verifiable in your head: 21% of 100 is 21, and 100 plus 21 is the 121 you typed. Now do it the wrong way for comparison. Subtracting 21% from 121 gives a net of 95.59, which leaves 25.41 for the tax — but 21% of 95.59 is a shade over 20, nowhere near 25.41, so the subtraction answer cannot even agree with itself. That internal contradiction is the quickest way to spot the error in someone else's spreadsheet: take the net it claims, apply the rate to it, and see whether you land back on the total.
Feed the 72.59 invoice total from the case above into Remove Tax at 21% and 59.99 comes back with 12.60 of tax, exactly where it started.
1,000 at 23%, in both directions, and the 43.01 mistake
Portugal and Poland both run a 23% standard rate, and 1,000 is a common enough round figure on a quote to make this the highest-stakes row on the page.
Add Tax on a net 1,000 gives 230.00 of tax and 1,230.00 gross — the easy direction, since 23% of 1,000 is 230 by inspection.
Remove Tax on a gross 1,000 gives 813.01 net and 186.99 of tax, where subtraction would have claimed 770 and 230. Check it either way: 1,000 ÷ 1.23 = 813.008, which rounds to 813.01, or read the fraction off the reference table, 18.6992% of 1,000 = 186.99.
The asymmetry is worth naming, because it catches people out on quotes. Adding 23% to 1,000 and removing 23% from 1,000 are not inverse operations on the same number — the first gives 1,230, the second 813.01. Only add-then-remove on the same starting figure comes back to itself.
A United States cart at a combined 7.7%: what Custom is for
This is the mode most visitors to this page need, and the one the country list cannot do for them. There is no United States tier to select, so the rate comes from you.
Set the toggle to Add Tax, leave United States selected, choose Custom in the rate box, and type 7.7 into the custom rate field. Enter 45.50 as the price without tax. The cards report 3.50 of Sales Tax and a total of 49.00 — a rare case where a fractional rate lands on a round total, since 45.50 × 0.077 is 3.5035.
Why 7.7 rather than a state figure? Because a combined rate is what a receipt actually charges you: state plus county plus city plus any special district. The Tax Foundation's population-weighted national average for 1 January 2026 is 7.53%, so a rate a little either side of that is typical rather than exotic.
The same Custom field covers rates the dropdown has no tier for: a Canadian province's combined HST on top of the federal 5%, or a superseded rate needed to reconstruct an old invoice.
199.99 with UK VAT already inside it: the one-sixth check
A UK receipt shows 199.99 and you need the two components for an expense claim. Remove Tax, United Kingdom, Standard 20%, price 199.99.
Net 166.66, VAT 33.33. Check it with the fraction rather than the division: at 20% the tax is one sixth of the gross, and 199.99 ÷ 6 = 33.3316, which reports as 33.33. Two independent routes, same cent.
Subtracting 20% would have returned 159.99 and a tax of 40.00 — and 40.00 is exactly what the tool reports if you run 199.99 through Add Tax at 20% instead, arriving at a gross of 239.99. That coincidence is the trap in miniature: the number 40.00 is a real answer to a real question, just not to this one. It is the tax on a net 199.99, not the tax inside a gross 199.99.
Worth knowing for UK receipts specifically: the 20% standard rate is not the only one you will meet. GOV.UK zero-rates most food and children's clothes, and puts home energy and children's car seats at 5%, so a supermarket receipt can contain 20%, 5% and 0% lines at once. Run each group separately rather than applying one rate to the whole total.
Sweden at 25%: the only rate that is a clean fifth
Pick Sweden and the standard Moms rate of 25%, then run 100 through both modes.
Add Tax on a net 100 gives 25.00 of tax and 125.00 gross. Remove Tax on a gross 100 gives 80.00 net and 20.00 of tax — a fifth of the price, exactly, with no rounding involved at all. The reference table shows why it is the only clean row: at 25% the tax share of the gross is 20.0000% and the net share is 80.0000%, both exact.
That makes 25% the single best anchor for the whole subject. Anyone who can hold "a quarter added is a fifth removed" in their head has understood the asymmetry the rest of this page is about. It also shows how narrow that luck is: 24% leaves 19.3548% of the gross as tax and 27% leaves 21.2598%, neither of which divides into anything a person would remember.
Sweden's 12% reduced tier makes the same point one step down — 10.7143% of the gross is tax, 89.2857% is net, both exact, neither a figure anyone estimates by eye.
Driving the Calculator, Control by Control
The page opens in Add Tax mode, on the country your locale points at, with 100 in the price field. For a United States visitor that opening screen carries no rate at all, so the first move is either a country with statutory tiers or the Custom box.
1. Set the direction with the Add Tax / Remove Tax toggle at the top. Add Tax expects a price with no tax in it and hands you the total. Remove Tax expects the total and hands you the price underneath. The price field renames itself to match, so the label is your confirmation that the toggle is where you want it.
2. Choose the country. The box is a searchable list with flags, your own country pinned at the top under Your country and the rest grouped under All countries. Search ignores accents, so typing tur finds Türkiye and mex finds Mexico.
3. If a Tax type selector appears, choose the system. It only shows for a country running more than one, which on the current list means Spain alone — mainland IVA at 21/10/4, or the Canary Islands' IGIC at 7/3/0.
4. Pick the rate tier. The dropdown lists what the country actually legislates, with the percentage beside each label: Standard, Reduced, Super-reduced, plus the country-specific ones — Intermediate for Portugal's 13% and Belgium's 12%, Minimum for Italy's 4%, Particular for France's 2.1%, Lodging for Switzerland's 3.8%, Increased for Argentina's 27%, Luxury for India's 28%, Service for Malaysia's 8%, and Zero where a zero rate exists. Custom sits at the foot of that list for every country, whether or not it has tiers of its own. Switching country loads the Standard tier where one exists — Hong Kong is the exception, since its only tier is the zero rate — and Standard is not always the largest figure on the row: India's standard GST is 18%, with the 28% luxury tier above it.
5. Or select Custom and type the rate yourself. A percentage field appears, taking anything from 0 to 100, decimals included — 7.7 for a combined United States rate off a receipt, or any rate the dropdown has no tier for. Overshoot 100 and the field warns you as the digits go in, then pulls the value back to 100 once you leave it.
6. Enter the price. Your locale's currency code sits at the head of the field, and cents are welcome. Punctuation is not: a comma is treated as the decimal marker and a second separator is discarded rather than accepted, so 1,000 arrives as 1.000 — one unit, not a thousand of them. Type it as 1000.
7. Read the three cards. The first is the answer in your chosen direction, labelled with the local name of the tax — Price with IVA, Price without ΦΠΑ. The second is the tax itself. The third states the rate in force, worth a glance when you are on a custom figure or a four-tier country.
Two panels below the cards are worth opening. When the country has statutory tiers, a compact table lists all of them with the current selection highlighted, headed with the local tax name and the country — IVA Rates in Spain, KDV Rates in Türkiye. For the United States and Brazil there is no such table, since there is nothing to list. Under it, the Calculation breakdown accordion prints the working in the tool's own words: in Remove mode it reads, in effect, Net price = 121.00 ÷ (1 + 21%) = 100.00, then IVA = 121.00 − 100.00 = 21.00. That is the entire method in two lines, and it is the part to copy into an email when someone disputes your figures.
Getting a figure out is deliberately plain: the small copy icon beside the first two cards puts the bare number on your clipboard — 82.64, no currency symbol, two decimals, a period for the decimal mark — which is what a spreadsheet cell expects. The address bar is read once, at load, for five parameters — mode, country, rate, customRate and price — so a hand-built link carrying mode=remove, country=ES and price=121 opens the page on that calculation already. Nothing you type afterwards is written back into the address, and the embed button on the page hands over an iframe of the tool rather than a link to your own figures.
Three behaviours at the edges are worth knowing before they surprise you. A price of 0 empties the first two cards, since there is nothing to tax or untax, while the third carries on displaying the rate you picked. Clicking into a field that reads 0 empties it ready for overwriting, and a field left blank returns to 0 the moment focus leaves it. And a minus sign is rejected as you type it, in both the price and the rate, so no sequence of keystrokes produces a negative tax.
One formatting quirk to expect on this locale: the cards are formatted in the site's own currency rather than the currency of the country whose rate you chose, so a Spanish IVA result arrives in dollar formatting.
Where Tax Calculations Go Wrong
- Subtracting the rate instead of dividing by it. This is the whole reason a remove mode exists. A gross 100 at 21% is 82.64 net, not 79, because the rate was charged on the smaller net figure and a percentage of the gross is always less than the same percentage of the net. The error scales with everything: 0.24 at 5%, 3.64 at 21%, and 43.01 on a 1,000 line at 23%. Divide by 1 plus the rate, or multiply the gross by the fraction from the reference table — either works, subtraction never does.
- Expecting a United States rate to be waiting in the list. Select United States and the tier list is empty by design, with an italic line asking for a custom rate; there is no ZIP lookup and no state table on this page, because sales tax is set by state, county, city and district across more than 12,000 jurisdictions. Take your combined rate from a recent receipt or your state revenue department, select Custom, and type it. The same applies to Brazil, where ICMS is set state by state.
- Confusing the rate with the tax's share of the gross. A 21% rate means the tax is 17.3554% of the total, not 21% of it — the two figures are different numbers for the same tax, and reading the wrong one is the classic bookkeeping slip. The shortcut worth memorising is the fraction: one sixth at 20%, one fifth at 25%, one eleventh at 10%. If a colleague's spreadsheet takes 20% of a gross figure and calls it the VAT, it is overstating the tax by a fifth.
- Leaving the toggle on Add when the price already includes the tax. The same 100 at the same 21% gives 121.00 in Add mode and 82.64 in Remove mode, a 38.36 spread from a single click, and neither screen looks broken. The fix is the price field's own label — Price without tax in one mode, Price with tax in the other — the only on-screen statement of what the tool thinks you handed it.
- Applying the standard tier because it was the one already loaded. Switching country selects Standard and leaves it there, and the calculator cannot know whether the line you are pricing is a hotel night, a bag of flour or a children's coat. Nothing on screen will question a plausible-but-wrong tier, and the miss is worst in the cases that matter most, since a reduced tier is usually a fraction of the standard one. Settle the tier from the invoice or the tax authority before you touch the price field.
- Treating the tiers as permanent facts. Every rate here is a statutory number and statutes change; Romania and Russia have both moved theirs recently. The tiers in the dropdown are what the tool will apply today, not a guarantee about the date on your invoice. For anything with legal or accounting consequence, confirm the rate against the national tax authority — and for a historical document, use Custom to enter the rate that was in force at the time.
- Trusting the Effective rate card to catch a mistyped rate. It reports the rate you selected, so a 2.1 fat-fingered as 21 comes back at you looking exactly as confident as a correct figure. Two surfaces do catch it: the highlighted row in the country's own rate table, which shows which tier is live, and the breakdown accordion, which prints the rate inside the working. Check one of them before a figure leaves your desk.
- Not noticing that a punctuated price was quietly rescaled. A price typed as 1,000 is accepted without complaint and worked as one unit, so the cards come back around a thousandfold too small. No warning appears, because nothing invalid was entered — the only symptom is an answer that is absurd for the purchase in front of you. Retype the figure unpunctuated and the cards return to a sane scale.
- Folding a discount and a tax rate into one percentage. They are separate steps on separate bases and combining them into a single figure has no correct answer. Work the discount first in the discount calculator — or the multiple discounts calculator if a code is stacked on a sale — then bring the resulting price back here and add the tax to it.
VAT and Sales Tax — Frequently Asked Questions
How do I remove VAT from a price?
Divide by 1 plus the rate as a decimal — 1.20 at 20%, 1.21 at 21%. A gross 100 at 21% comes back as 82.64 net with 17.36 of tax. Subtracting 21% instead gives 79, which is wrong by 3.64.
What is the VAT fraction?
The share of a tax-inclusive price that is tax: the rate divided by 100 plus the rate. At 20% that is 20/120, or one sixth. At 25% it is one fifth, at 10% one eleventh. Multiply a gross price by that fraction to get the tax without dividing.
Why isn't there a United States sales tax rate in the calculator?
Because there is no single United States rate to preset. Sales tax is levied by states, counties, cities and special districts rather than nationally — more than 12,000 jurisdictions by Fonoa's count, with statewide rates running from 2.90% in Colorado to 7.25% in California and five states charging none at all. Selecting United States therefore shows an empty tier list and the note "No predefined rates. Use a custom rate." Choose Custom, type your combined rate from a receipt or your state revenue department, and the rest of the calculator works exactly as it does for a country with statutory tiers. Brazil behaves the same way, since ICMS is set state by state.
Does the calculator find my local sales tax rate from a ZIP code or address?
No. There is no address lookup, no ZIP-code table and no state list on this page. That is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature: a single ZIP code can straddle more than one taxing district, so a rate keyed to five digits can be wrong at the level that matters. This tool does the arithmetic once you supply the rate, and does it identically whether that rate came from a dropdown or from your keyboard.
Is VAT the same as sales tax?
No, though both end up paid by the consumer. VAT is collected in stages along the supply chain, with each business charging it on sales and reclaiming what it paid on inputs; United States sales tax is charged once, at the final retail sale, with no input credits and resale exemptions instead. The practical difference for anyone using a calculator is how prices are displayed: VAT is normally inside the advertised price, so you start from a gross figure and remove; United States prices are quoted before tax, so you start from a net figure and add. More than 170 countries run a VAT or GST; the United States is the notable exception among large economies.
How much is VAT on 1,000 at 23%?
It depends which 1,000 you mean. If the 1,000 is net, the tax is 230.00 and the total is 1,230.00. If the 1,000 already includes 23%, the net is 813.01 and the tax inside it is 186.99. Those are the two modes of this calculator, and the gap between the answers — 43.01 of tax — is exactly why the distinction matters.
Why is the tax 17.36 and not 21 when I remove 21% from 100?
Because 21% is charged on the net price, not on the total. If the total is 100, the net must be 82.64, and 21% of 82.64 is 17.36. Expressed as a share of the total, a 21% rate is 17.3554% — the fraction 21/121. One line closes the argument: 82.64 + 17.36 = 100.00, while a tax of 21 would require a net of 79, and 21% of 79 comes to under 17.
Which rate applies to food, home energy or children's clothes?
That depends entirely on the country, and the calculator will not classify a product for you — you choose the tier. Most countries with a reduced rate apply it to food, and several go further: GOV.UK zero-rates most food and children's clothes and charges 5% on home energy and children's car seats, Germany's reduced tier is 7%, Hungary's is 5%. EU law fixes only the shape of this — a floor under the standard rate and a floor under the reduced ones — never the product lists themselves, which stay national. When in doubt, take the tier from the invoice or the national tax authority, then apply it here.
Can I use a rate that isn't in the country list?
Yes — select Custom and a percentage field appears, accepting anything from 0 to 100 with decimals. That covers a combined United States rate, a Canadian province's HST, a rate that changed after this page was written, or an old rate needed for a historical invoice. The field caps at 100 and refuses a minus sign, so it will not produce a negative tax.
How accurate is this calculator?
The arithmetic works to two decimals, which is the precision an invoice line is written in. In Remove mode the tax is derived as the gross minus the rounded net, so for a price typed to the cent the two figures always rebuild the total you entered. Two limits are worth stating plainly. The Effective rate card echoes the rate you selected rather than recomputing it, so it cannot flag a mistyped rate. And adding then removing the same rate returns the original in every case tested here, but both directions round independently, so on an awkward price the round trip can land a cent away.
Why do the results show dollars when I pick Spain?
Because the cards are formatted in this locale's currency, not in the currency of the country whose rate you chose. It is a display convention rather than a conversion — nothing is being exchanged, and no rate of exchange is applied. The tax arithmetic is unit-free: 21% of 100 is 21 whatever the 100 represents. Read the digits as your answer and ignore the symbol, or use the copy icon, which hands over the bare number with no currency attached.
What do I do with the net and tax figures once I have them?
For an invoice, the net goes on the line and the tax on its own row, which is the format most tax authorities expect. For an expense claim, the net is usually the recoverable cost and the tax the reclaimable element if your business is registered. For price comparison across borders, always compare like with like: a gross European price against a gross one, since a net United States shelf price will look cheaper than it is until the checkout adds tax. And if you are pricing your own work, decide which figure you quote — quoting net to a consumer who reads it as the final price is the commonest source of an awkward conversation later.
Is this VAT calculator free to use?
Yes. There is nothing to unlock, no account to create and no limit on how many prices you push through it, in either direction, on any of the countries in the list or on a rate you type yourself. Nearby tools cover the neighbouring questions: the discount calculator for a single percentage off, the multiple discounts calculator for a sale with a code stacked on top, and the percentage calculator for percentage work with no price involved.
Kilder og referanser
- European Commission — How does VAT work (VAT Directive: fractional collection, input tax deduction, neutrality for businesses)
- European Commission — VAT overview (definition, standard and reduced rates across EU member states)
- GOV.UK — How VAT works (definition, registration thresholds, charging and reclaiming VAT)
- OECD — International VAT/GST Guidelines (standards for VAT collection on cross-border trade in 170+ countries)
- Wikipedia — Value-added tax (VAT formula, invoice-credit method, global adoption history)