VAT Calculator
Net, VAT and gross update live at any rate — exact to the cent, with the gross→net direction divided out correctly, never subtracted.
You have the price before tax and want the total with VAT on top.
Nothing leaves your browser. The calculation is plain integer arithmetic on your own device — no network requests, no account, and the page keeps working offline. Copy buttons copy the plain number (e.g. 100.00), ready for a spreadsheet.
Adding and removing VAT are not mirror images
Adding VAT is the easy direction: multiply the net by the rate and put the result on top. Net 100.00 at 20% carries 20.00 of VAT for a gross of 120.00. The trouble starts when you hold a VAT-inclusive price — a till receipt, a consumer price tag — and want the net back out of it. The rate was charged on the net, which you don't know yet, so you cannot take the rate off the gross. You have to divide by (1 + rate).
The remove-VAT trap, worked through
Take a gross of 120.00 at 20% VAT. The correct net is 120.00 ÷ 1.20 = 100.00, leaving exactly 20.00 of VAT. The tempting shortcut — subtracting 20% of the gross — gives 120.00 − 24.00 = 96.00, which is wrong by a full 4.00. Why: the 24.00 you subtracted is 20% of 120.00, but VAT was never charged on 120.00 — it was charged on the 100.00 net. The error grows with the rate: at 25%, gross 120.00 contains a net of 96.00 (120 ÷ 1.25), while the subtraction shortcut says 90.00 — six units off.
| Gross | Rate | Correct net (÷ 1+rate) | “Subtract rate%” gives | Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 120.00 | 20% | 100.00 | 96.00 | 4.00 |
| 120.00 | 25% | 96.00 | 90.00 | 6.00 |
| 107.00 | 7% | 100.00 | 99.51 | 0.49 |
The Remove VAT mode above always performs the division, computed as VAT = gross × rate ÷ (1 + rate) with the net derived by subtraction.
Exact integer cents, one rounding rule
Every amount in this tool is an integer count of the currency's smallest unit (cents, pence, whole yen) and every rate is an integer count of basis points (19% = 1900), so no floating-point error can creep into the money itself. There is exactly one rounding step: the VAT component is rounded half-up to the minor unit, in exact big-integer arithmetic. The remaining figure — gross when adding, net when removing — is derived by plain addition or subtraction, never rounded a second time. That is why net + VAT = gross holds to the cent on every result this page shows; the three numbers cannot disagree.
Worked example: 19% on 99.99
Net 99.99 at 19%: the exact VAT is 99.99 × 0.19 = 18.9981, which rounds half-up to 19.00, giving gross 118.99. Going back, gross 118.99 at 19% contains 118.99 × 19 ÷ 119 = 18.9984…, again 19.00, restoring net 99.99 exactly. Add-then-remove round-trips like this at every vector we searched. The opposite order can drift one cent at tiny amounts: removing 5% from gross 0.31 yields net 0.30 (exact VAT 0.0148 → 0.01), but re-adding 5% to 0.30 yields 0.32, because the exact VAT of 1.5 cents rounds half-up to 2. That asymmetry is inherent to rounding money to whole cents — this tool documents it (and pins it in its test suite) rather than hiding it.
About the “common rates” chips
The chips — 5, 7, 10, 19, 20, 21, 25% — are rates in widespread use around the world, offered purely as shortcuts. This page deliberately makes no claim about which rate any country applies: statutory rates change, and nearly every regime layers reduced, zero and exempt categories on top of its standard rate. The authoritative rate for your situation is the one on your invoice or published by your tax authority; type it into the rate box — anything with up to two decimals (e.g. 7.75) works.
Currencies and zero-decimal handling
The currency selector affects formatting only — symbol, grouping and decimal places. It never converts between currencies; there is no exchange-rate table here, real or fabricated. What it does do is respect each currency's minor unit: Japanese yen, Korean won and Vietnamese dong have none, so amounts must be whole and VAT is rounded to a whole unit. Example: ¥999 net at 10% gives VAT of ¥100 (99.9 rounds half-up), gross ¥1,099 — there is no such thing as ¥99.90.
Honest limits
This is arithmetic, not advice: it does not know your jurisdiction, your goods category, or whether you may reclaim input VAT, and nothing here is tax or legal guidance. It applies a single rate to a single amount — for a document with several line items at mixed rates plus discounts, use our Invoice Generator, which apportions exactly across lines. Arithmetically the math also fits single-rate sales taxes (US-style tax added on the net works the same way), but compound or cascading taxes and margin schemes are not modeled. And some jurisdictions legally mandate a different rounding rule (round-down, or rounding per line vs per total); this tool uses half-up on the VAT component, stated plainly, so you can check whether that matches your requirement.