Do they calculate sales tax on clothes based on the whole order or individual items?

Question

Like say I am buying two shirts and two pants for ten dollars each. And the sales tax is 10%. Would it be 20*10%, 40*10% or would it be each individual item by 10%? Like 10*10%, 10*10%, etc. And I live in CA, I don't know if its different or not in each state or something but I am just trying to calculate the total price on my school clothes. Thanks!

Answer 1

It will work out to very close to the same whether you add up the items first, then apply the tax to the total, or figure the tax on each item and add them up.  There might be a few cents difference due to rounding.

Answer 2

It’s doesn’t matter.  The number won’t change.

10% of 20+30+50 = $10

10% of 20 = $2

10% of 30 = $3

10% of 50 = $5

That’s still $10

Answer 3

Since tax is a percentage eg: 10 percent it does not matter if it is one item worth 100 dollars or 10 items worth 10 dollars that equal 100 dollars. you will pay 10 dollars tax or 1 dollar on every 10 dollar item it all adds up to the same

Answer 4

Um... wow.

Yeah, it's the same thing no matter which way you do it.

Deep question.

Answer 5

What they do is take the 10% off the whole order that is subject to the tax; it's just easier to set up the computers/registers to do it that way.

But because of the associative property of numbers (3 times 5 is the same as 5 times 3; the order of multiplication makes no difference), it makes no difference in the end.

Answer 6

Well, you have the right to demand that they calculate the tax on the total purchase, rather than the individual items, on purchases made at the same time at a single store, but it really doesn't make that much difference.  

The statutory table for sales tax calculation in California is a little high for some purchases between 5 cents and 95 cents, but, for the most part, the only difference between calculating sales tax on the individual items and on the total is rounding error.

Sales tax in California ranges from 7.25% to 8.75%, depending on city and county.  (I can't prove there aren't rates over 8.75%, but I don't think there are.)

Answer 7

It's the same total no matter what.

Remember the distributive property that you learned in math class?

(10 x 10%) + (10 x 10%) + (10 x 10%) + (10 x 10%)

is the same thing as

(10 + 10 + 10 + 10) x 10%