Sales Tax

How do you figure out how much tax you have to pay? In New Brunswick, we have to pay both sales tax and a tax we call the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on most items we buy. The government decided to put both of these taxes together and call them the Harmonized Sales Tax. (HST) New Brunswick’s HST is set at 14%.

This means that everything you buy (including things like hair cuts) are subject to an additional 14%. It’s important to be able to calculate this so that you will know how much money you will need to buy an item.

For Example, you want to buy a new bike. $120 The bike you want costs $120. How much is the sales tax on this bike. How much will it cost you all together to buy the bike?

First, figure out what question is being asked. The question is: $120 “What is 14% of $120?” Mathematically, it can be written as: 0.14 x $120 = 16.8 Since it is money, we would state that the tax would be: $16.80 Now to find the total cost, we add the tax to the price of the bike. $16.80 + $120 = $136.80

Figure out the Sales Tax and the total cost of the following items. $45 $225 $36.99 $149

Find out the sales tax and total cost for each of the following $8.75 $29.89 $96.00 $14.69