easyMcalc

School arithmetic, one rounding pointConventions reviewed 12 September 2026

Discount calculator

An estimate for information only, not financial advice. How this is worked out

You pay $199.99 Full breakdown

The price and what comes off it
The percentage on the label, taken off the list price.
An extra percentage off the already reduced price. Leave it at nothing if there is only one offer.
A coupon and tax
A fixed amount off, taken after the percentages.
Charged on the reduced price, which is how a sales tax works in the United States.

What you pay

You pay $199.99

List price
$249.99
You save
$50
That is a discount of
20%
Price before tax
$199.99
You pay
$199.99

Step by step

StepRateAmountPrice after it
List price$249.99$249.99
Discount20.00%-$50$199.99
You pay$199.99$199.99

Each line applies to the price on the line above it, which is the order a till applies them in.

Two discounts are not their sum

The single most common mistake with a sale price is adding the percentages together. An extra ten per cent off an item already reduced by twenty is not thirty per cent off. The second offer applies to the reduced price rather than to the original, so the two together take twenty-eight per cent off the label and leave you paying seventy-two per cent of it. Two lots of twenty, which sound like forty, come to thirty-six.

That is not a rounding quibble. On anything expensive the gap between what people expect and what they pay is the whole reason the second offer is worth advertising. This page shows the chain step by step for exactly that reason: each line applies to the price on the line above, which is the order a till applies them in, and the last line is what you hand over.

The single percentage the whole chain adds up to is printed beside the saving. That figure is what compares two offers with different shapes: a straight discount against a discount plus a coupon, or a large percentage on a higher list price against a small one on a lower.

Where the coupon and the tax sit in the order

A fixed amount off behaves differently from a percentage, and where it lands changes the answer. Here it comes after both percentages, which is the common case: a coupon knocks a flat sum off what you would otherwise have paid. If the shop applies it first instead, put the coupon in as the discount and work the percentages on what is left.

Sales tax is charged on the discounted price. That is how a sales tax works in the United States: the tax base is what changes hands, not what the label once said. It is worth noticing what follows from that, because it is the quiet second saving in any discount. Taking a fifth off the price takes very nearly a fifth off the tax as well, to within the rounding of a cent.

A value added tax is a different animal and this field is not one. Where prices are advertised with the tax already inside them, work out the discount on the price as shown and leave the tax field empty.

A coupon worth more than what is left does not pay you to take the goods away. The price stops at nothing and the page says so rather than printing a negative number.

What this page does not know

It does not know whether the list price was ever the real price. Several jurisdictions regulate that question, requiring a shop to state the lowest price charged in some period before the reduction was announced, and none of that is arithmetic. The calculation here starts from the number you give it.

It also has nothing to say about delivery, restocking charges, loyalty points, or offers that do not reduce to a percentage at all. Buy-one-get-one and three-for-two are discounts on a basket rather than on an item, and turning them into a single rate depends on what else is in the basket.

Common questions

Why is twenty per cent then ten per cent not thirty per cent?

Because the second ten per cent is ten per cent of a smaller number. Taking a fifth off leaves four fifths; taking a tenth off that leaves nine tenths of four fifths, which is seventy-two per cent of where you started. The saving is twenty-eight per cent, not thirty.

Does the order of two percentage discounts matter?

In exact arithmetic, no: multiplying by four fifths and then by nine tenths comes to the same thing either way round. In money it can differ by a single minor unit, because each step is rounded to the cent before the next one is applied. A price of 90.05 reduced by a fifth and then a tenth comes to 64.84, and taking the tenth first comes to 64.83. It is never more than one unit, and this page applies the discounts in the order the form lists them.

A fixed amount off is a different matter. Where a coupon sits in the chain changes the answer by real money, which is why the order here is fixed and stated rather than left to chance.

Can I use this for a price increase?

Not directly. The discount fields only take reductions. A price rise is the markup field on the margin calculator, and the two are worth keeping apart: a twenty per cent rise followed by a twenty per cent cut does not bring you back to where you started.

Why does the effective discount differ from the two rates I typed?

Because it is measured against the list price, and it counts everything that came off, including the coupon. It is the one number that answers "how good is this offer" without any reference to how the offer was put together.

Is anything I type stored?

No. The calculation happens on the server as part of rendering the page, nothing is written down, and the access log for this site drops the query string precisely so that the numbers you enter are never recorded.

Sources

There is nothing to cite. This page is school arithmetic on the numbers you typed, and no authority defines a right way to do it. What is worth stating instead is the convention the page chose, which is in the note below.

How this is worked out

One amount, one percentage, and the amount they imply. The part is the amount multiplied by the rate and rounded to the nearest minor unit, in a single step; the rest is the amount less the part rather than a second multiplication, so the two halves always add up to what was split. A share is the part divided by the whole, rounded the same way. Every figure on this page is one of those three steps or a chain of them.

Nothing here is a quote, an offer or an underwriting decision.

What this page does not take into account:

  • Income tax and any other deduction from what you earn
  • Buy-one-get-one and other offers that do not reduce to a single percentage
  • Delivery, restocking charges and anything else added at the till