A sales tax invoice is used to calculate a state’s sales tax on a service or product that was sold to an end-user within the state. Different states charge different sales tax, check to see your state’s sales tax rate before finalizing this invoice.

Table of Contents

• What Is Sales Tax?
• How to Calculate Sales Tax
• Sales Tax by Zip Code

What Is Sales Tax?

Sales tax is a tax that is regulated at the state level that charges a percentage of an item sold at retail. The government in each state decides the percentage rate for its sales tax. The percentage rate is not permanent and often changes with the political party in charge (generally states run by democrats have a higher sales tax and states run by republicans have a lower sales tax). When an item is bought, it’s the retailer’s responsibility to collect the sales tax from the customer and pay it to the government. Customers trying to avoid sales tax by going to a different state often doesn’t work. For example, if a customer tries to buy a car out-of-state to avoid paying sales tax, they will be charged for the sales tax when they register the vehicle in their state.

How to Calculate Sales Tax

When offering an item for sale, it’s generally known that the sales tax is not included until the item is purchased. For example, if an item is offered for $10.00 dollars in the state of Wisconsin, the total price at checkout would be $10.50 due to the state’s 5% sales tax. We get this calculation by the following: $10.00 dollars x .05 (5%) = .50 cents $10.00 dollars + .50 cents = $10.50

Sales Tax by Zip Code

There are only 4 states that do not charge a sales tax which are Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. All the remaining 46 states charge a sales tax which can be seen detailed below.