Percents

Percentages in Real Life

Sales tax

Depending on where you live, you might pay a sales tax on the things you buy. A sales tax is an extra charge added to the price of an item. The amount you pay in tax is almost always a percentage of that price.

Suppose you buy a $50 coffeemaker in an area where the sales tax is 8%. When you check out, 8% of $50 would be added to your total price. How much would you pay total?

Click through the slideshow to learn how to calculate sales tax.

Let's say you want to buy a $50 coffeemaker, and the sales tax is 8%.
Sales tax is a percentage of the price of the item. This means the sales tax is eight percent of fifty dollars.
Whenever you see the phrase "of something" in a math sentence, it's usually a hint that you'll need to multiply.
So we'll multiply 50 by 8%.
Before we can do that, we'll need to convert 8% into a decimal.
We'll move the decimal point two places to the left...
We'll move the decimal point two places to the left...so 8% becomes 0.08.
Now we can multiply: 0.08 times 50 equals 4.00.
So the sales tax is $4.00. Another way to say this is that 8% of $50.00 is $4.00.
Remember, sales tax is an extra charge added to the price of an item. So we'll add the sales tax to our original price.
$4.00 plus $50.00 equals $54.00.
The final price of the coffeemaker is $54.00 after adding sales tax.
Let's try another example. Let's say you want to buy a six pack of soda that costs $4.50, and the sales tax on food is 4%.
This means the sales tax is 4% of $4.50.
So we'll multiply 4% by 4.50.
First, we need to convert 4% into a decimal, so we'll move the decimal point two places to the left.
4% is the same as 0.04.
Now we'll multiply: 4.5 times 0.04 is 0.18, so the sales tax is $0.18, or 18 cents.
We could also say that 4% of $4.50 is $0.18.
Finally, we'll add the sales tax to the original price.
4.50 plus 0.18 is 4.68.
So the final price is $4.68 after adding sales tax.