Capital Gains Tax Calculator

Your capital gain is your sale price minus your cost basis, generally what you originally paid, plus commissions or fees. The tax on that gain isn't a flat percentage of the gain alone: it depends on your other taxable income for the year, because the IRS calculates it by stacking your gain on top of that income.

Example: a single filer with $40,000 in other taxable income sells a stock held for two years, for a $20,000 long-term gain. The 2026 single-filer 0% bracket covers taxable income up to $49,450. Since $40,000 of ordinary income already fills part of that space, only $9,450 of the gain is tax-free; the remaining $10,550 falls into the 15% bracket, for $1,582.50 in tax. A flat-rate estimate would either overstate or understate this, depending on the assumed rate.

• Enter your sale price and cost basis to get your raw capital gain.
• Select whether you held the asset over a year (long-term) or a year or less (short-term).
• Select your filing status and enter your other taxable income for the year, not including this gain.
• The calculator stacks your gain on top of that income using the real 2026 IRS brackets and shows the tax owed.

These are the official 2026 thresholds from the IRS, published in Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Your ordinary income fills these brackets first; your long-term gain is then taxed at whatever rate the remaining space falls into, which can span more than one rate if your gain is large.

Short-term gains skip this table entirely and are taxed at your regular federal income tax rate instead, which has seven brackets from 10% to 37% depending on your filing status and income.

If you're selling your primary residence, you may be able to exclude up to $250,000 of the gain from tax entirely (up to $500,000 if you file jointly with your spouse). To qualify, you generally must have owned and lived in the home as your main residence for at least 2 of the 5 years before the sale.

This calculator applies the full exclusion amount when you select the primary residence option, since a partial-eligibility calculation depends on details this calculator doesn't collect. If you're not sure you qualify for the full exclusion, check the ownership and use tests against your actual situation before relying on this result.

This calculator estimates federal tax only. Most states tax capital gains as part of ordinary income, on top of whatever you owe the IRS. A handful of states have no broad income tax and don't tax capital gains either: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

Washington is a real exception worth knowing about: it has no general income tax, but it does levy a separate 7% capital gains excise tax on long-term gains above an annually adjusted standard deduction ($278,000 as of 2025, adjusted for inflation each year), with real estate specifically exempted from that tax. If you're in Washington, don't assume gains are untaxed just because there's no state income tax.

This calculator also doesn't model a few real special cases: gains on collectibles or qualified small business stock (capped at a 28% rate rather than the standard long-term rates), unrecaptured Section 1250 real estate depreciation gain (capped at 25%), or the 3.8% net investment income tax that can apply on top of regular capital gains tax for higher earners. If any of these apply to your sale, your actual tax will differ from this estimate.

These related calculators cover cost basis and other investment tax situations:

• Stock Cost Basis Calculator - work out your real cost basis before calculating gain
• Crypto Tax Calculator (FIFO) - for cryptocurrency sales instead of stocks or property
• Estate and Inheritance Tax Calculator - for inherited assets, which use a different, stepped-up cost basis
• Dividend Payout Ratio Calculator - a different investment metric, dividend sustainability rather than sale tax