VAT calculator
Add VAT to a price, or take it back off — at 20%, 5% or nothing. Free, nothing to sign up for.
A price you quoted plus VAT. VAT goes on top.
Standard. Most work.
Before VAT
£1,000
VAT at 20%
£200
Customer pays
£1,200
£1,000 plus VAT is £1,200, and £200 of that is not yours — it belongs to HMRC and goes out on your next return.
Taking VAT off is not taking 20% off
This is the one that costs money. A customer pays £120 including VAT. Knock 20% off and you get £96, so the job reads as £4 less than it earned. The right answer is £100: VAT was added to £100 to make £120, so it comes off by dividing by 1.2.
The shortcut worth memorising is the VAT fraction: at 20% the VAT is a sixth of the gross. £120 ÷ 6 = £20. At 5% it is a twenty-first.
The error is always in the same direction — it understates what you earned — so it never shows up as a shortfall anybody chases. On fifty jobs a year it is a bill nobody sent.
The VAT in a price was never yours
A £6,000 bathroom paid in full is £5,000 of turnover and £1,000 held for HMRC. Treating the whole £6,000 as money in is the reason a quarterly return lands as a shock — the figure was spent months ago on materials and wages.
It is worth seeing both numbers on every job rather than only the one on the invoice.
Quote a householder the figure they will pay
A domestic customer reclaims nothing, so “£2,400 plus VAT” is a price they cannot act on and a conversation you will have again at the end of the job. Quote them £2,880 and say what the VAT in it is.
A VAT-registered business is the opposite: the net figure is the real cost to them, so that is the one to lead with.
Construction work has its own rule on top
Invoicing another contractor for building work often means charging no VAT at all and saying so on the invoice — the VAT domestic reverse charge. It is not a judgement call, and five things have to be true at once.
A note on what this is
A guide, not advice. Which rate applies to a particular job can be genuinely difficult — check anything that matters with your accountant.
Built by TaskMyJob, using the same conversion as every price box in it. More free tools: markup and margin, the CIS calculator, or all of them.