Before tax — the food and drink line.
Your receipt almost certainly suggests tips on the discounted total. Many servers are tipped out on the pre-discount amount instead. No authority settles this — pick the one you mean.
Pick your state, or type the exact tax off the receipt below.
The number on your receipt always wins. Type it here and the state average is ignored.
We take it out of the tip base so you don't tip on a tip.
Type what each person ordered. Tax and tip are shared out in proportion — not divided evenly.
Sales Tax Calculator
Add or strip sales tax from any amount.
Add tax, or take it back out
Two questions, opposite directions. What will this cost me? takes a pre-tax price and adds tax. How much of this was tax? takes a total that already includes tax and works backwards to the price and the tax inside it.
The second one is the one people actually need at a table, and it is the one most calculators leave out.
It is not Total × rate. Multiplying a tax-inclusive total by the rate overstates the tax, because you are taxing the tax.
Why the state dropdown is an average
Pick a state and this calculator fills in a rate. That rate is a state average, and it says so, because the honest thing to do with a number that might be wrong is to label it rather than dress it up.
Sales tax in the United States is not set at the state level. It is set by the state, then the county, then the city, then sometimes a transit district or a special taxing zone drawn around a stadium. The rate on your receipt is the sum of whatever happens to overlap at that address.
Some tools ask for your ZIP code to look this up. A ZIP code is a mail routing tool, not a tax jurisdiction — ZIPs cross county lines, and the answer that comes back is precise and sometimes wrong. That is a worse failure than an average, because it looks authoritative.
The places the average lies to you
A few states are worth knowing about, because a general sales tax rate is genuinely misleading there:
- New Hampshire has no sales tax at all — and taxes prepared meals at 8.5%. A calculator that says 0% for a restaurant bill in New Hampshire is simply wrong.
- Vermont charges 9% on meals and 10% on alcohol, against a 6% general rate. Some towns add another 1%.
- Maine charges 8% on prepared food, against a 5.5% general rate.
- Washington DC charges 10% on restaurant meals, against a 6% general rate.
- Virginia looks cheap on paper and is not: most cities and counties add their own meals tax on top, commonly 4% to 7.5%. Fairfax County added 4% on 1 January 2026.
- Alaska has no state sales tax but plenty of local ones. Montana has none either, except in ten resort towns that levy 3% on restaurant meals. Oregon really is zero.
Where a state charges a separate meals rate, this calculator uses the meals rate — not the general one.
Where these numbers come from
State and combined averages are from the Tax Foundation, State and Local Sales Tax Rates, Midyear 2026, published 6 July 2026. Meals rates are cited on the state rows that carry them.
Rates change. If a figure here disagrees with your receipt, your receipt is right and we are out of date — tell us.