The sale
The holding period — this is what picks the table
The state layer
This page works out capital gains tax on one sale, split into federal and state. Nothing is calculated yet.
The federal tables this page uses
Both tables below are the 2026 figures, transcribed from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (taxable years beginning in 2026). They are printed here so you can check the arithmetic against the same numbers the page used, and so the year is not something you have to take on trust.
Maximum capital gains rate — §1(j)(5)(B). A gain is taxed at 0% up to the first amount, 15% up to the second, and 20% above it.
| Filing status | 0% up to | 15% up to | above that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single | 49,450 | 545,500 | 20% |
| Married filing jointly | 98,900 | 613,700 | 20% |
| Married filing separately | 49,450 | 306,850 | 20% |
| Head of household | 66,200 | 579,600 | 20% |
Ordinary brackets — §1(j)(2). Used only for a short-term gain, which is taxed at these rates rather than the preferential ones.
| Rate | Single | Married filing jointly | Head of household |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | up to 12,400 | up to 24,800 | up to 17,700 |
| 12% | up to 50,400 | up to 100,800 | up to 67,450 |
| 22% | up to 105,700 | up to 211,400 | up to 105,700 |
| 24% | up to 201,775 | up to 403,550 | up to 201,750 |
| 32% | up to 256,225 | up to 512,450 | up to 256,200 |
| 35% | up to 640,600 | up to 768,700 | up to 640,600 |
| 37% | above that | above that | above that |
Married filing separately uses the single brackets for ordinary income as well, but its own 15% capital gains ceiling of 306,850.
How the two layers work
The sale part is the same four steps as anywhere on this site: the cost is the shares times the buy price plus the buy fee, the net proceeds are the shares times the sell price less the sell fee, the taxable gain is the difference, and a fee on either side sits inside the gain rather than beside it.
What this page adds is what happens after the gain is known.
The holding period decides which table applies. More than one year — which is what the month box tests, twelve months or fewer being short term — and the gain takes the preferential ladder: nothing on the part that fits under the 0% amount for your filing status, fifteen per cent on the next band, twenty above that. Twelve months or fewer and the gain is ordinary income instead, so it is stacked on top of the rest of your taxable income and taxed at whichever ordinary brackets it reaches.
Your other income decides how much of the gain lands in each band. Ordinary income fills the low bands first, so the gain starts wherever your income already ended. That is why the same gain is taxed differently at two different income levels, and why the page asks for income and prints the bracket the gain actually reached rather than a flat headline rate.
The state layer sits on top and is never guessed. Eight states levy no broad individual income tax at all — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming — and for those the state layer is zero. One more, Washington, reads like those and is not: it levies no income tax, and it charges a separate excise on long-term capital gains above an inflation-indexed threshold (RCW 82.87), so its rate stays yours to type and the box does not lock. Everywhere else the page applies the rate you type, once, to the whole gain. It keeps no state table, picks no state bracket and does not spread the gain across a state's own bands, because state treatment of capital gains is not one number: some states use their own progressive brackets, some exclude a share of the gain, and some give long-term gains a different rate from short-term ones.
Short-term gains — the same page, the ordinary table
Held twelve months or fewer, the same sale is a short-term gain, and the month box above routes it to the other table. Nothing else moves: the sale arithmetic is identical and the state layer sits on top the same way. A short-term capital gains tax calculator is this page with a holding period under a year, not a second tool beside it, which is why the two hold one page here instead of two.
What a short-term gain does not get is a rate of its own. There is no single short-term capital gains tax rate to quote, because the gain is not taxed under a table of its own: it is stacked on top of your other taxable income and taxed at whichever ordinary brackets it reaches, 10% up to 37%. A short-term gains tax is, in other words, your ordinary income tax applied to a gain. That is why the page asks for your income at all — without it the bracket the gain lands in cannot be known, and a short-term capital gains calculator that prints one flat figure without asking is assuming one.
A worked short-term example. 500 shares bought at 30.00 and sold at 55.00, held 8 months, single, with 100,000.00 of other taxable income and a state rate of 5.00% typed in.
Taxable gain = (500 × 55.00 − 0.00) − (500 × 30.00 + 0.00) = 27,500.00 − 15,000.00 = 12,500.00.
Held 8 months — 12 or fewer, so this is a short-term gain and it is taxed at ordinary rates.
Federal, short term: the gain is stacked on 100,000.00 of other taxable income and taxed at ordinary 2026 rates — 5,700.00 at 22.00%, 6,800.00 at 24.00% → federal tax = 2,886.00.
State: 12,500.00 × 5.00% = 625.00 — the rate you typed, applied once to the whole gain. This page keeps no state table.
Total tax = 2,886.00 + 625.00 = 3,511.00. After-tax net = 27,500.00 − 3,511.00 = 23,989.00. Effective rate = 3,511.00 ÷ 12,500.00 = 28.08%.
Every figure above is produced by the tool at the top of this page from the same inputs, rounded down to the cent — not a single one of them is written in by hand.
Hold the same shares for 18 months instead and nothing above changes except the holding period: the gain is long term, and with the same 100,000.00 of other income the whole 12,500.00 falls in the 15% band — federal tax 1,875.00, total 2,500.00, effective rate 20.00%, after-tax 25,000.00. The extra 1,011.00 is what the twelve-month line is worth on this sale, and it is why the stock short term gain tax on a position is worth working out before the sale rather than after it.
The state layer is unchanged by any of this, and so is its honesty rule: this page still keeps no state table, because states split on the same question — some tax a short-term gain as ordinary income, some give a long-term gain a separate rate or an exclusion and tax the short one in full — and the figure that applies to you is a rate you type.
What this page does not do
Named here so the figure above is read for what it is:
- No state brackets. The state layer is one multiplication at the rate you typed. It does not stack the gain across a state's own bands, and it does not know your state's exclusions or its separate long-term rate.
- No net investment income tax. The 3.8% surtax that can apply above certain income levels is not added by this page.
- No local or city tax. Only the state layer, plus the state rate you type if your city is inside it.
- No losses, no carryover, no offsetting. One sale, and if it comes out at or below cost the tax lines stay empty rather than reading zero.
- No lot selection, no wash sales, no adjusted basis. One buy price for the whole position; splits, stock dividends and returns of capital are not modelled. The cost basis calculator is where a basis gets built from several purchases.
- No dividend tax and no income tax on anything else. This page is about a sale. Money a share paid you while you held it belongs to the dividend tax calculator.
- Not built: several sales at once, importing a statement, saving your history, signing in, or filing anything.
If you want the arithmetic without the two layers — one gain and one rate you already know, no holding period, no state — that is the stock capital gains tax calculator, which returns the gain, the tax at your rate and the after-tax net and keeps no table at all. This page is the one to use when the question is which table applies and what the state adds.
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. The tax is floored to the cent, so what you read is at most a cent under the exact multiplication, and the totals are floored again after the addition. Each step is printed with its own numbers, so you can redo any of them if the place you are putting the figure expects a different rule.
Where the state layer is worked out in more detail
This page takes the state rate as a figure you type and applies it once. If you want the other half of that question — which states charge no capital gains tax at all, and how the federal 0% band stacks on top of a state that does tax income — that is the no-tax states page, which classifies every state with an official source. For the whole state-by-state classification — including the states that subtract or exclude part of a gain and the one that charges a separate excise, every name carrying a link to that state's own revenue authority — that is the capital gains tax by state page, which also works the federal bands and the 3.8% surtax through. And if the reason you are selling is to clear a debt, the sell-for-debt page carries the after-tax amount forward to whether it actually covers the balance.
Frequently asked questions
Is capital gains tax 15% or 20%? For a long-term gain the answer is usually neither of them on its own, because one sale can be taxed at more than one rate, and the rate on the last slice of it depends on two numbers rather than one: your other taxable income, and the size of the gain. The 2026 bands are drawn on taxable income as a whole and not on the gain alone, at 0% up to 49,450.00, 15% up to 545,500.00 and 20% above that for a single filer. With 100,000.00 of other taxable income, the 20% band opens the moment the gain passes 445,500.00, which is 545,500.00 minus 100,000.00. Below that number the whole gain sits at 15% and the question has one answer. Above it, the same sale is taxed at 15% and at 20% at once, and the answer is a blend of the two.
One income, three gains. The grey block is the 100,000.00 of other taxable income underneath all three; the dashed line is the 545,500.00 where the 15% band ends and the 20% band opens.
A gain of 445,500.00 lands exactly on the line: 66,825.00 of tax, still 15.00%, with nothing at 20%. One dollar more and the 20% band opens, which is why the third bar costs 16.81% and not 15.00%. The gain is what walked the sale across that line, and the income is what put the line where it stands.
The other half of the same answer runs the other way, and it is the half that catches people out. Take the same 50,000.00 long-term gain at two incomes. With 30,000.00 of other taxable income, 19,450.00 of the 0% band is still empty, so 19,450.00 of the gain is untaxed and 30,550.00 is taxed at 15%: federal tax 4,582.50, an effective 9.16%. With 100,000.00 of other income there is no 0% room left, all 50,000.00 falls in the 15% band, and the tax is 7,500.00, an effective 15.00%. The same gain, 2,917.50 apart, and at neither income is it 20%.
The bars are the gain, not the tax: the pale part is what the 0% band took in, the blue part what the 15% band took in. The tax each row costs is printed at the right.
Held twelve months or fewer, the question has no answer at all, because neither 15% nor 20% is in play. A short-term gain is ordinary income, and the same 50,000.00 on 100,000.00 of other income falls in the 22% and 24% ordinary brackets: 5,700.00 at 22.00% and 44,300.00 at 24.00%, which is 11,886.00 of federal tax and an effective 23.77%, higher than the 20% band that was never applied to it. The holding period box above is the one field that decides which of these three answers this page gives you.
Every figure in this answer comes out of the tool at the top of the page from those same inputs, floored to the cent and to two decimal places on the rate. The page will not fill a rate in for you, but it holds both tables and prints the slices the gain fell into, so a blend shows as a blend instead of collapsing into one of the two rates you asked about.
How much tax do I pay on a long-term capital gain? It depends on the band the gain reaches, and the band depends on your other taxable income. Ordinary income fills the low bands first, so the gain starts where your income ended: the part under the 0% amount for your filing status is untaxed, the next band is 15%, and anything above the 15% ceiling is 20%. Type the sale, the holding period, your filing status and your income, and the page prints which bands the gain fell into and the tax on each.
What counts as long term? More than one year. The page takes the holding period in months: more than twelve is long term, twelve or fewer is short term. Holding for the extra day matters, because a short-term gain is taxed at ordinary rates, which reach higher than the capital gains ladder does.
Does my state tax the gain separately? In most states, yes, and this page lets you put that rate in. Eight states levy no broad individual income tax, so for those the state layer is zero. Washington belongs to neither group cleanly — no income tax, but a separate excise on long-term gains above a threshold — and its rate is one you type like any other. This page deliberately holds no state table: pick your state, type the rate you know applies, and the page applies it once and shows the working.
Why does the page ask for my other income? Because the capital gains bands are drawn on taxable income, and the gain is only the top slice of it. At a low income a large gain can still land mostly in the 0% band; at a high one the same gain can reach the 20% band. Without the income figure the page would have to assume a band, and it will not.
How much tax do I pay on a short-term capital gain? A figure that depends on your other income, which is why the page prints the working rather than one rate. A short-term gain is ordinary income: it is stacked on top of your other taxable income and taxed at the ordinary 2026 brackets it reaches, so the same gain is taxed differently at two different incomes. Enter the sale, a holding period of twelve months or fewer, your filing status and your income, and the page prints each slice of the gain, the bracket it fell into and the tax on it.
Is a short-term sale a different calculator? No — it is this page with the holding period set to twelve months or fewer, which is the whole reason long and short share one page. The month box switches the federal table from the 0/15/20 ladder to the ordinary brackets, and the state layer works exactly as it does for a long-term gain: a rate you type, applied once.