Capital Gains Tax Calculator

Short-term vs long-term capital gains

How long you owned the asset before selling decides which rate applies:

• Short-term — you held it one year or less. The gain is taxed as ordinary income, at your normal federal rate of 10% to 37% — the same brackets the income tax calculator applies.
• Long-term — you held it more than one year. The gain gets the lower long-term rates of 0%, 15% or 20%, based on your taxable income and filing status.

That single year is often worth thousands in tax. In the calculator, pick your holding period and enter the rate that matches your situation — the table below shows which one to use.

2026 long-term capital gains tax rates

Long-term gains use these 2026 taxable-income brackets (for returns filed in early 2027). Find the row for your filing status and total taxable income to get your rate:

Married filing separately: 0% up to $49,450, 15% to $306,850, then 20%. Short-term gains instead follow the ordinary income brackets (10%–37%).

How capital gains tax is calculated — the formula

The maths is short: your gain is what you sold for minus what you paid (your cost basis), and the tax is that gain times your rate.

Your cost basis is more than the purchase price alone — it also includes commissions, fees and reinvested dividends, all of which lower your taxable gain, so keep those records.

How to lower your capital gains tax

Legitimate, widely-used ways to keep more of your profit:

• Hold for more than a year — the jump from ordinary rates to 0/15/20% is the biggest single lever.
• Use the 0% bracket — if your taxable income is low in a given year (a gap year or early retirement), long-term gains inside the 0% band are tax-free.
• Harvest losses — selling losing investments in the same year offsets your gains dollar-for-dollar; up to $3,000 of net loss can offset ordinary income, and the rest carries forward.
• Sell in tax-advantaged accounts — gains inside a 401(k), IRA or Roth are not taxed as you trade — see how they compound with the compound interest calculator.
• Primary-home exclusion — selling your main home lets you exclude up to $250,000 of gain ($500,000 married filing jointly) if you owned and lived in it two of the last five years.
• Inherited assets get a step-up — heirs' cost basis resets to the value at death, wiping out the earlier gain.

This is general information, not tax advice — confirm with a tax professional for your situation.

NIIT, collectibles and real estate

A few gains fall outside the standard 0/15/20%:

• Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) — an extra 3.8% on investment income, including capital gains, once your income tops $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly). Add it to your rate in the box above if it applies.
• Collectibles — art, coins and precious metals are taxed at up to 28%.
• Real-estate depreciation recapture — the part of a rental-property gain from depreciation you claimed is taxed at up to 25%.

How to use it & key terms

Enter your purchase price, sale price, holding period and rate, then press Calculate to see the gain, the tax and your net gain after tax.

Short-term vs long-term — and ways to lower the bill

How long you hold an asset changes everything. Sell within a year and the gain is short-term, taxed as ordinary income at your regular rate. Hold longer than a year and it becomes a long-term gain, taxed at the preferential 0%, 15% or 20% rate that applies to your income band — often far less than ordinary rates. That single distinction is why patient investors watch the one-year mark before selling.

Several rules can soften a bill further. Tax-loss harvesting offsets gains with realized losses, and up to $3,000 of net loss can offset ordinary income each year, with the rest carried forward. Selling a main home may qualify for the $250,000 exclusion ($500,000 for a married couple filing jointly) if you meet the ownership-and-use test. High earners should also budget for the additional 3.8% net investment income tax, and everyone should watch the wash-sale rule, which disallows a loss if you rebuy the same security within 30 days.

Paper gains, realised gains, and the timing you control

An investment can climb in value for years without triggering a single dollar of tax. That is the gap between an unrealised gain — a paper gain that exists only on your statement while you still hold the asset — and a realised gain, which happens the moment you sell. Capital gains tax attaches only to realised gains, so watching a stock, fund or property rise creates no bill by itself. It is why patient investors can let a position compound untouched: nothing is owed until they decide to sell, and the choice of when to sell stays firmly in their hands.

Because the taxable event is the sale, you hold unusual control over when it lands. Selling in a year when your other income dips can pull the same profit into a gentler band; spreading a large disposal across two calendar years can keep part of it out of the top band; and simply waiting past the one-year mark turns a short-term gain into a long-term one. Retirees and those between jobs often find a low-income year is the cheapest time to realise a long-held position. None of that is about hiding income — it is about choosing the moment, a lever employees rarely have over their wages.

It also helps to picture a long-term gain as sitting on top of your ordinary income rather than beside it. Your wages and other earnings fill the lower bands first, and the gain stacks above them — so one large sale can begin in a lower rate band and spill into a higher one, with part taxed gently and part taxed more. That stacking is exactly why the box above asks for the rate that fits your circumstances: the right figure depends on how much room is left in your band before the gain is added.

One habit underpins all of it: keep clean records of what you paid, including commissions and reinvested distributions, for as long as you own the asset. That figure — your cost basis — decides how much of the sale is genuinely a gain, and rebuilding it years later is far harder than noting it as you go. Losses deserve the same care, since a realised loss can offset a realised gain in the same year. Treat every result here as an estimate to confirm against current official guidance before you act.