How to quickly calculate sales tax

In the store, you often see people picking up a calculator when trying to determine the sales tax for a particular item. However, if you don't have a calculator or want you to calculate the sales tax manually, I will show you how to quickly calculate the sales tax.

I remember a few months ago with my friend Mary outside an electronics store because she was thinking about buying a new refrigerator. Her goal is to buy a refrigerator under $1,000. At the store, she found a beautiful model I had never seen before, but the price was $950.

Mary said excitedly. "That's it. This is the one I am going to."

"But," I protested. "This refrigerator will cost you more than a thousand dollars in sales tax."

In this case, Mary, like many of us, did not consider taxing items. Obviously, the higher the price of the project, the greater the sales tax. So how can we teach Mary and others to quickly calculate taxes?

Well, if we use what I call "10% of the rules," it is quite easy to manually determine the tax.

The "10% rule" allows us to quickly estimate sales tax without the need for a calculator. We can use this rule to easily come up with a number that is very close to the actual tax of the project. And, if we want to be very precise, we can use this rule to get almost exactly the correct number.

Let's see how this system quickly determines the final coastline. When Mary and I went out to buy a refrigerator, our state in California had the highest tax rate of 8.25%. According to our 10% rule, we can quickly estimate that 10% of the $950 refrigerator will be $95 by moving the decimal point to a point on the left. More specifically, since California has a ratio of 8.25%, we only need 10% to reach 10% of every 1%, which will be $9 [we will not consider factors in this equation because it is more easily].

Therefore, we now know that 10% of the refrigerator is $95, and 2% of the refrigerator is $18. If we subtract $18 from $95, we will reach $77, which is equivalent to a total of 8%.

If we want to calculate further to the exact amount [25%], we can say that 10% of 1% will be 90 cents. If we multiply by 2.5, we get a figure of $2.25. Now let's add $77 for $8, and we're totaling $79.25.

When we use the calculator to calculate the tax for this item, we can see that our manual sales tax calculations put us at $1 in the actual sales tax of $78.38.

So, don't be afraid the next time you don't have a calculator. Simply use this "10% rule" to manually calculate the sales tax quickly.

As a footnote, Mary still bought a refrigerator.

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