Question

An item costs $420 before tax, and the sales tax is$ 16.80 whats the sale tax rate

Answer 1

We need to set up an equation to solve this problem. The sales tax is a percentage of the total, so that's what we are looking for.

Let's call S our sales tax

`420* S`

So, that's what we are looking for, and we are given the actual sales tax

`420* S = 16\\S = 16/420\\S= .0380`

So now we have a decimal. In order to convert a decimal into a percentage, we must multiply by 100 (since percentages are out of 100)

`.0380*100=3.8\%`

The sales tax rate is 3.8%