How the three figures are worked out
One sale, four steps, and every step is printed under the results using the numbers you typed.
- Total cost = (shares × buy price) + buy fee
- Net proceeds = (shares × sell price) − sell fee
- Taxable gain = net proceeds − total cost
- Tax = taxable gain × your rate ÷ 100
- After-tax net = net proceeds − tax
The fees sit inside the gain, not beside it: the buy fee goes into what the shares cost you, the sell fee comes off what the sale paid you, and the gain is the gap between the two. That is why the taxable gain here is smaller than the raw difference between the two prices — a fee on either side narrows it.
Worked example: 150 shares bought at 50.00 and sold at 62.00, with a 5.00 fee on the way in and a 7.00 fee on the way out. Total cost is 7,500.00 + 5.00 = 7,505.00. Gross proceeds are 150.0000 × 62.00 = 9,300.00, net proceeds 9,300.00 − 7.00 = 9,293.00, and the taxable gain is 9,293.00 − 7,505.00 = 1,788.00. What the tax comes to depends entirely on the rate you type, so the page stops there until you put one in — and once you do, it prints the multiplication and the subtraction that follow.
Where the rate comes from
From the box, and from nowhere else. There is no tax table behind this page, no bracket lookup, no list of countries or states, and no rate of the site's own waiting to be used if you skip the field. Type one and the page multiplies by it; type nothing and the tax line stays empty rather than filling itself in.
That is a deliberate limit, and it is the reason this page is honest about what it returns. A capital gains figure is only as good as the rate behind it, and a rate is a fact about you — where you file, what else you earned, how long you held the shares, what kind of account they sat in — that no calculator can read off a share count and two prices. So the page asks, and if you do not answer, it says the tax was not calculated instead of showing a number it invented.
What follows from that: the figure here is the arithmetic of your own rate against your own gain, and nothing more. It is not an estimate of a tax bill, it is not a filing position, and it is not advice about which rate applies to you. If you do not know which rate to type, this page is not the place to find out.
What this page counts, and what it does not
Three prices and a rate — the shares, what you paid, what you sold at, and the rate you typed. Fees if you type them. Everything below is outside the page, with no box to put it in.
- No rate, no bracket, no holding period. The page does not ask how long you held the shares and keeps no table that would turn an answer into a rate. Short and long holding periods are not two settings here; there is one box and it takes one number.
- No state, regional or local tax. Whatever you type is applied once, to the whole gain. A second layer of tax on the same sale is not something this page models.
- No dividend tax. This page is about a sale. Money a share paid you while you held it is taxed under different rules and belongs to the dividend calculator, which works out what that income comes to.
- No losses, no carryover, no offsetting. When the sale comes out at or below your cost there is no gain for a rate to be applied to, so the tax line stays empty and the page says why. What a loss does on a tax return — carried forward, or set against other gains — is not worked out here.
- No wash sales, no lot selection. The page takes one buy price for the whole position. It does not know about lots, does not match shares against purchases, and does not watch for a repurchase around the sale.
- No adjusted cost basis. Splits, stock dividends and returns of capital move a basis, and there is no field for any of them. What you type as the buy price is what the page subtracts. The cost basis calculator is the page for building that figure from several purchases.
- No currency conversion. Every amount comes back in whatever you typed, and no exchange rate is applied anywhere.
- No live prices, no tickers. This page never fetches a quote, by design — it would rather show nothing than show a price it did not get from you.
- Not built: several sales at once, importing a statement, saving your history, signing in, or filing anything. There is no account here and nothing is stored.
Rounding, and which way the last digit goes
Every figure on this page is rounded down, never up — the same rule as the rest of the site. Share counts and per-share prices are shown to four decimals, amounts and percentages to two, so the number you read is never larger than the one that was computed.
On this page that rule cuts in one direction that is worth knowing: the tax is floored to the cent, so the tax shown is at most a cent under the exact multiplication, and the after-tax net is floored again after it. Both are printed with the arithmetic beside them, so you can redo either one with a different rule if the place you are putting the figure expects one.
Frequently asked questions
How much tax will I pay on stock gains?
Whatever your rate comes to on the gain — and the rate is the part this page cannot supply. Type the shares, the two prices and the fees, and the page returns the taxable gain; type your rate as a percent and it returns the tax on that gain and what is left after it. Without a rate the page stops at the gain and says so, because a tax figure built on a rate nobody chose would be a guess dressed as an answer.
Why does it ask me for a rate instead of knowing it?
Because a rate is a fact about your circumstances, not about the shares. Where you file, what else you earned, how long you held the position and what kind of account held it all move the number, and none of them can be read off a share count and two prices. This page keeps no table and picks no bracket, so the rate has to come from you — and if it does not, the tax line stays empty rather than filling itself in.
Is tax on stock gains worked out on the profit, or on the whole sale?
On the gain: what the sale paid you, less what the shares cost you, with the fee on each side counted in. Selling 150 shares for 9,300.00 is not 9,300.00 of taxable money — the 7,505.00 they cost comes off first, and the fees on both sides move that gap. The taxable gain line above is that difference, and it is the figure your rate is applied to.
Do the fees change the tax?
Yes, and in both directions. A buy fee raises what the shares cost you, a sell fee lowers what the sale paid you, and both narrow the gain the rate is applied to. That is why the fees are inside the gain rather than subtracted after it — leaving them out would tax you on money that went to costs, not to you.
What happens if I sold at a loss?
The taxable gain comes out at or below zero, and the tax line stays empty with a line saying why: there is no gain for your rate to be applied to. The page does not go on to work out what that loss does on a tax return — carried forward, or set against other gains — because that is a question about your whole filing, not about this sale.
Is this a dividend tax calculator?
No. This page is about selling: shares bought at one price, sold at another, and the tax on the difference. Dividends are money a share paid you while you held it, they are taxed under their own rules, and they are not part of any figure here. For that income, use the dividend calculator.
Can I use it for several sales, or for part of a position?
One sale at a time, and the whole position at one price. There is no field for a partial sale and no way to enter a second sell price, so a position sold in stages is several runs of this page, each with its own shares and its own price.
Will this match what I owe?
It matches when the rate you typed is the one that applies and the cost you typed is the one the filing uses. Both are yours, and both are where a difference would come from: an adjusted basis carrying a split or a reinvested dividend, a rate that is not the one the page multiplied by, or a second layer of tax this page does not model. The printed arithmetic lets you see exactly which of your own numbers produced each figure.
How is this different from the profit calculator on this site?
That one stops before tax and covers several buys. The stock profit calculator pools any number of purchases into one average cost, charges the fee on each side and returns the net profit and the break-even price, with no tax anywhere on the page. This page takes one buy price and adds the tax: the gain, the tax your rate produces, and what is left after it.
Does it work on my phone, and do I need an account?
Yes to the first, no to the second. The fields stack to a single column on a narrow screen and the results stay inside the width of the page. There is no sign-up, no pop-up and nothing to install: the whole calculation runs in your browser and your numbers are not sent anywhere.