How the tax on a dividend is worked out on this page
The dividend comes first, and the tax follows from it. One share pays you an amount each time; times the payments a year, that is what one share pays a year; times your shares, that is the year's dividend. Then the split: the qualified share you typed cuts that figure into two parts, and each part is taxed at the rate you typed for it. The two taxes are added, the sum comes off the dividend, and what is left is what reached you.
Dividend a share, a year = dividend a share per payment × payments a year
Dividend income a year = dividend a share, a year × shares
Qualified part = dividend income a year × qualified share / 100
Ordinary part = dividend income a year minus qualified part
Tax = qualified part × qualified rate / 100 + ordinary part × ordinary rate / 100
After tax = dividend income a year minus tax
Here it is with an example, and every line below is printed under the result with your own figures in it: 500 shares, 0.60 a share per payment, 4 payments a year, 75% of the dividend qualified, 15% on the qualified part and 22% on the rest.
Shares = 500
Dividend a share, per payment = 0.60
Payments a year = 4
Dividend a share, a year = 0.60 × 4 = 2.40
Dividend income a year = 2.40 × 500 = 1,200.00
Qualified share = 75%
Qualified part = 1,200.00 × 75 / 100 = 900.00
Ordinary part = 1,200.00 minus 900.00 = 300.00
Tax on the qualified part = 900.00 × 15 / 100 = 135.00
Tax on the ordinary part = 300.00 × 22 / 100 = 66.00
Tax on the year's dividends = 135.00 + 66.00 = 201.00
After tax, a year = 1,200.00 minus 201.00 = 999.00
After tax, per payment = 999.00 / 4 = 249.75
After tax, a month = 999.00 / 12 = 83.25
Effective rate on the dividend = 201.00 / 1,200.00 × 100 = 16.75%
If all of it were qualified = 1,200.00 × 15 / 100 = 180.00
Extra tax from the part that is not qualified = 201.00 minus 180.00 = 21.00
So the tax is 201.00 on a dividend of 1,200.00, which leaves 999.00 for the year — 249.75 a payment and 83.25 a month. Read as one rate across the whole dividend it is 16.75%, which is neither of the two rates you typed: it is what the mix of them comes to. And the last line is the one the other pages do not print: had the same dividend been all qualified, the tax would have been 180.00, so the quarter of it that is not qualified costs 21.00.
Every figure is cut off downwards, never rounded up
One line, and it is the rule everywhere on this site: nothing here is ever rounded up. The dividend a share a year is shown to four decimals, every money figure to two, every rate to two, and each is cut off at that point rather than brought to the nearest. The tax on the screen is therefore never higher than the arithmetic behind it.
Each line of the working is worked out from the line above it exactly as that line is printed, so checking the sum with the figures on screen lands on the printed answer. That is also why the ordinary part is the dividend minus the qualified part rather than the dividend times the ordinary share: the two parts always add back to the dividend you typed, with nothing lost in between.
Two rates on one dividend is the whole point
A dividend is not always taxed at one rate, and the pages that rank for this word handle that by asking for more of your life instead: your income, your filing status, your state, sometimes your age, and then a bracket table on their side turns all of it into a rate. That is a reasonable thing to build, and it is also the reason those pages cannot answer a narrower question — what does the tax come to on this dividend, at the rates I was told apply to me?
This page answers that one, and it gives up the things the bracket approach needs. The qualified share is a box you fill, because only you know what your holding was paid. Both rates are boxes you fill, because there is no table here to look them up in. What you get for giving that up is a figure you can check: the dividend is printed, the split is printed, each tax is printed, and the difference between the mix and the all-qualified case is printed on its own line.
That last figure is worth knowing even when it is small. It is the price of the part of the dividend that misses the lower rate, in money rather than in percent, and it moves with two things you control the view of: how much of the dividend is qualified, and how far apart the two rates are. Run it at 100% qualified and the line reads 0; run it at 0% and it reads the whole gap.
What this page does not know
Three boxes carry the whole judgment here — the qualified share and the two rates — and the page has no opinion about any of them. It does not know and does not claim to know:
- Whether a dividend is qualified. No holding-period test is applied, no payment date is asked for, and no share is graded. The share is a number you type.
- What your rate is. No bracket, no filing status, no income field, and no rate waiting behind an empty box. Both rates are yours.
- Your state, your city, or any surtax. There is no state lookup and no second layer of tax on top of the two you typed. If a state rate applies to you, it is a rate like any other: type it, or run the page a second time.
- Withholding already taken out. Nothing here knows what a broker withheld, or what a foreign tax was deducted at source. The tax printed is the tax on the dividend at the rates you typed, not a balance due or a refund.
- The rest of your return. A dividend is not taxed in a vacuum: what else you earned can move which rate applies to it. This page works out one dividend against two rates and nothing beyond that.
None of that is tax advice, and none of it is a substitute for it. Where the two rates come from, and whether they are the right two for you, is a question for your own circumstances or for someone who knows them.
What this page cannot work out
The shares, the dividend a share, the payment count, the qualified share and the two rates are the whole input. These things are outside it:
- A whole tax return. One dividend, two rates. Not income tax, not a refund, not a bracket, not what you owe in April.
- A state or country figure. No jurisdiction is modelled and none is asked for.
- Reinvested dividends. Dividends that bought shares change the share count, and this page takes the share count as given. The dividend reinvestment calculator handles that side.
- Fees, commissions and currency. Nothing is deducted beyond the two taxes, and no exchange rate is applied, so keep one currency per run.
- Prices, yields and returns. A dividend tax is a figure about income, not about what the shares are worth. The dividend calculator works out yield on cost, and the CAGR calculator the compound rate on a value.
- More than one holding at different rates. Two holdings with different qualified shares are two runs of this page, not one. A blended figure across them is not a tax on anything.
There are no live prices, no dividend lookups and no rate lookups anywhere on this page. Every figure is typed by you and nothing is fetched, so every number on the screen traces back to your own input.
The same sum in a spreadsheet
Put the shares in A1, the dividend a share per payment in A2, the payments a year in A3, the qualified share in A4, the qualified rate in A5 and the ordinary rate in A6. As a formula, typed into any empty cell:
=A1*A2*A3*(A4/100*A5/100+(1-A4/100)*A6/100)
That is the tax. The dividend itself is =A1*A2*A3, and what you keep is the dividend minus the tax. One difference is worth knowing about: a spreadsheet rounds when it displays a number but keeps the full value underneath, while this page cuts every figure down at the point shown. On the same inputs the last decimal can differ, and when it does, this page is the one that matches the working printed above it.
The same holding, other questions
Tax is one question about a dividend, and the others sit beside it. If you want what the holding pays before any tax comes off, the dividend calculator works out the income per payment, per month and per year. If you want that income spread over the months and carried forward, the monthly dividend calculator does that and works backwards from the income you want. If you want how fast the dividend has been growing rather than what is taken off it, the dividend growth calculator takes two dividends and the years between. If the shares were sold rather than held, the capital gains tax calculator works out the gain, the tax on it at a rate you type, and the after-tax net. And if the shares were bought at more than one price, the cost basis calculator pools them into one figure per share.
Frequently asked questions
How much tax will I pay on my dividend?
Whatever the two rates you type produce on the two parts of your dividend, and this page works that out rather than telling you the rates. Put in your shares, what one share pays each time, how many times a year, what share of it is qualified, and the two rates. With the example above — 500 shares, 0.60 a share four times a year, 75% qualified, 15% and 22% — the tax comes to 201.00 on a dividend of 1,200.00, an effective 16.75% across the whole thing. Change either rate and the figure moves with it, because the rate is an input here and not a lookup.
How do I calculate taxes on dividends?
Work out the year's dividend first: what one share pays each time, times how many times a year it pays, times the shares you hold. Split that figure at the qualified share you were told applies to you. Tax each part at the rate that applies to it, add the two taxes together, and take the sum off the dividend. Those are the five lines the page prints under the result, in that order, with your own numbers in them — so the answer and the working are the same thing here, and you can check one against the other.
How much of dividend income is tax free?
Nothing on this page can tell you that, and it will not guess. What it can do is show what your own assumption comes to: type 0 as the rate on a part and the tax on that part prints as 0, which is what a tax-free part looks like in this arithmetic. Whether any of your dividend is untaxed, and how much of it, depends on your circumstances and on rules this page does not hold — no bracket table, no filing status, no jurisdiction is modelled anywhere in it.
Is this a qualified dividend tax calculator?
It is a dividend tax calculator that takes the qualified share as an input, which is not the same thing as deciding it. A page that decides would need the holding period, the payment dates and the rules behind them; this one takes one number from you and shows what it costs either way. The line printed as "if all of it were qualified" is there for exactly that comparison: it is your dividend taxed at one rate, next to your dividend taxed at the mix.
Does it handle state tax, or the surtax on investment income?
No, and it does not ask for them. There is no state lookup, no second layer, and no assumption about either. If one applies to you, treat it as a rate like any other: add it to the rate you type for the part it applies to, or run the page a second time with the state rate alone and read the two figures side by side. What the page will not do is add a third rate it has no field for.
Why does my figure differ from what tax software shows?
Three ordinary reasons, in the order they turn up. The rates differ: software looks yours up from a return, and here you typed them, so a different pair gives a different answer. The qualified share differs: this page uses the number you gave it, and software works its own out from your holdings and dates. And the rounding differs: this page cuts every figure down at the point shown, so the last decimal can sit below a figure that was rounded to the nearest. If all three match and the totals still disagree, the dividend being taxed is not the same dividend.
Can I use it for ETF and REIT distributions?
The arithmetic does not care what paid it, so a fund distribution a share works the same way. Two things are worth knowing. Fund distributions can be mixtures — income, capital gains and return of capital in one payment — and those parts are not all taxed alike, so the qualified share you type has to be the share of the payment you want taxed at the first rate, not the share the fund calls qualified. And a distribution that is partly a return of capital reduces cost rather than being income; this page treats everything you type as dividend income.
What if my payments were not all the same?
Add the year's payments a share and divide by how many there were, then put the average in and the count in alongside it: the year's dividend comes out the same. If the payments moved a lot — a raise halfway through the year — the average is still right for the year's total, but the qualified share may not be, because a change in the payment often comes with a change in what the payment is. In that case run the page once per stretch and add the two taxes.