Sales tax by county

Updated

Sales tax is levied by the state and then, in most states, again by the county, the city and special districts, so what you actually pay is a combined rate that is settled locally. This section has that combined rate for all 3,133 US counties, along with what each rate does and does not cover.

The county is often not the tax boundary. In many states the rate changes at a city limit inside the county, so the honest answer for that county is a range rather than a single number. Each county page says which it is.

Browse sales tax by state

Where is sales tax highest?

The highest combined rate in this dataset is in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, reaching 12.99% on a 5% state rate. A rate like that is stacked locally rather than set by the state, which is why two addresses a few miles apart can pay different amounts.

Which states have no sales tax?

5 states levy no general state sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon. That is not the same as paying nothing. In 4 of them (Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon) there is no general sales tax at any level. In the 1 remaining, local governments may levy one even though the state does not, so a city or borough there can charge sales tax while the state charges none.

How this differs from property tax

Sales tax is charged on what you buy; property tax is charged annually on what you own. They are set by different bodies and change on different schedules, so a county with high sales tax is not necessarily a county with high property tax. For the other one, see property tax by county.

To work out the tax on a specific purchase, use the sales tax calculator. If you sell into a state rather than buy in one, the question is whether you have to collect at all: see the sales tax economic nexus checker.

Sources

  • State rates and the rules on local levies: each state's own department of revenue, cited on that state's page.
  • Combined county rates: collected per county against docs/datasets/county-sales-tax-contract.md, last reviewed 2026-09-09.