Question

A bicycle has a listed price of $599.95 before tax. If the sales tax rate is 9.75%, how do you find the total cost of the bicycle with sales tax included?

Answer 1

See the full explanation for how to solve this problem below.

Explanation:

We can write an equation for the total cost of the bicycle as:

`C = p + (t xx p)`

Where:

`C` is the total cost we are trying to calculate.
`p` is the list price - $599.95
`t` is the tax rate - 9.75%. "Percent" or "%" means "out of 100" or "per 100", Therefore 9.75% can be written as `9.75x/100`.

Substituting and solving for `C` gives:

`C = $599.95 + (9.75/100 xx $599.95)`

`C = $599.95 + (($5849.5125)/100)`

`C = $599.95 + $58.50`

`C = 658.45`