4.6c Translate Percents And Applications - Sales tax

4.6b: Translate percents and applications - sales tax Sales tax is another example of when we will use the equation part equals percent times whole. In this case, the part will be the actual amount of tax and it will be equal to the tax rate or percent times the price or the original price of the item. In example 1, it asks, what is the sales tax on a $499.00 television if the tax rate is 8.5% and what would you pay for the TV? There are two questions here that we must make sure we answer. First is to identify the pieces. It asks what is the sales tax on a $499.00 television, $499.00 is our original price, and then it also gives us our tax rate is 8.5%. Remember this is our percent. It wants to know what the sales tax would be or the part. Let us start with this question first. We know that our equation is tax or part equals percent times whole or price. This means that we could write tax, the part we do not know, equals percent or 8.5 ÷ 100 x 499. Remember that if you do not know something, you can actually write this as your variable X. We now have X = 8.5 ÷ 100 x 499. It is helpful to turn your fraction into a decimal. This will give you X = 0.85 x 499. You can now multiply these to get that the X or tax is going to be equaling $42.00 and 415 which we will round to $42.42. This answers the first question of what is the sales tax. Next, we will need to determine how much we will actually pay total. To find out the total you pay, you take the original price of the item or $499.00 and we will add the additional amount of tax that we are paying or $42.42. When we add these two together, we get the total price we would be paying, which is $541.42. This is the total amount which answers the second question. In example 2, Mark purchased a $390.00 table and he paid $25.35 in sales tax. He wants to know what was the tax rate that he paid. First, we need to identify the different numbers in this question. We have $390.00 table, this would be our original price. We also have how much he paid in sales tax, so this would be the tax amount. Remember, the price is our whole and the tax is the part, so we can set it up as part or 25.35 is or equals our tax rate or percent, which remember if we do not know the percent we use X over 100. We then multiply this by the original price of the table or 390. We can now begin to solve the problem. We have 25.35 = X over 100 x 390. This is 390X over 100. We now have a fraction. Remember to clear fractions in problems, you multiply by the LCD to both sides. This will eliminate the fraction and you will now have 390X = 2535. You can now continue to solve the problem by dividing both sides by 390. This results in X = 6.5. Remember, that this is a percent that you have found, so it is 6.5% and this is his tax rate. You have now found your answer as 6.5% tax. Remember in solving sales tax equations you use the same formula of part equals percent times whole, where the part is the tax and the whole is the price.