VAT Calculator

Add or remove value-added tax from any amount.

Businesses reclaim the tax on their inputs, so it ultimately falls on the final consumer, and exports are often zero-rated. Registration thresholds exempt the smallest traders, which is why some invoices carry no tax line at all.

Value-added tax is charged at every stage of production and already sits inside the ticket price, which is why a European shelf price never changes at the register. Standard rates run from 17% to 27% across the EU and 20% in the United Kingdom, with reduced rates on food, books and children's clothing.

Value-added tax is charged at each stage of production, with businesses reclaiming the tax paid on their inputs, which leaves the final consumer bearing the whole charge. Rates sit inside the quoted price in Europe, so removing one means dividing by one plus the rate.

Removing VAT divides by one plus the rate rather than subtracting it: a 20% tax inside a £120 gross price is £20, not £24.

Rates differ by category rather than by buyer: most European countries apply a reduced rate to food, books and children's clothing. A business registered for the tax reclaims what it pays on inputs, so the charge is designed to land only on final consumption.

VAT Calculator sits with the rest of the library's finance work, and it rests on the same consumption-tax arithmetic the way a lender's disclosure or a bank statement does. Its answer is only as good as the assumptions standing behind it.

The quantities it works from — amount, vat rate and direction — are the ones a real consumption-tax question actually turns on, and each carries a convention of its own, set out below.

Money questions in America turn on the same few trade-offs: how long a balance is carried, what rate applies to it, and whether the money is being paid down or built up. Inflation sits behind all of them, since a figure that looks generous at today's prices buys less at tomorrow's, and comparisons across decades are made in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

American products also disclose their costs in prescribed ways, from the APR on a consumer loan to the annual percentage yield on a deposit account.