Federal capital gains tax calculator for stocks, crypto and property

The tax on a property sale starts with the gain: the sale price minus selling costs, minus your basis, which is what you paid plus buying costs and the improvements you made. Keep the property more than one year and the gain is long-term, taxed at 0%, 15% or 20% depending on where your total taxable income lands. Sell within a year and the whole gain is ordinary income at your marginal rate.

What you owe depends on what kind of property it is. A home you lived in usually qualifies for an exclusion of $250,000 or $500,000. A rental property carries depreciation recapture, and an inherited property starts from a stepped-up basis. The real estate card in the calculator handles all three: a main home box, a box for unrecaptured section 1250 gain and the Schedule D Tax Worksheet underneath.

If you sell your main home, section 121 of the tax code excludes up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for married couples filing jointly. You qualify when you owned the home and lived in it as your main home for at least two of the five years before the sale, and you have not used the exclusion on another home in the previous two years. If you move sooner for a job change, a health reason or another unforeseen circumstance, you can claim a reduced exclusion. A loss on a main home is never deductible.

Gain above the exclusion is taxed like any other long-term gain. Tick the main home box on the real estate card, choose your filing status in section 3, and the calculator subtracts the exclusion before it works out the tax.

A rental property sale has a second layer. Each year you rent the property you deduct depreciation, and the IRS lowers your basis by that depreciation, claimed or not. Your gain is the sale price minus selling costs minus that adjusted basis. The part of the gain that comes from earlier depreciation is unrecaptured section 1250 gain, taxed at up to 25%. The rest is long-term gain at 0%, 15% or 20%.

In the calculator, enter the adjusted basis (cost less depreciation) as the purchase price, add improvements in their own field, and put the total depreciation in the unrecaptured section 1250 box. Gain on collectibles such as coins, bullion and art has its own box, taxed at up to 28%.

High earners owe a further 3.8% net investment income tax on the gain once modified adjusted gross income passes $200,000 (single or head of household) or $250,000 (married filing jointly). The calculator adds it when your income crosses the threshold.

Property you inherit takes a basis equal to its fair market value on the date the owner died, not what they paid for it (section 1014). Only growth after that date is taxable when you sell. The holding period is long-term automatically (section 1223(9)), so a sale within a year of inheriting still gets the 0%, 15% and 20% rates.

In the calculator, enter the date-of-death value as the purchase price and pick a purchase date more than a year before the sale. Selling below the date-of-death value shows as a loss.

A sale on the one-year anniversary is still short-term: you have to hold the asset more than a year. Long-term gains stack on top of your ordinary income and fall into the 0% band up to $49,450 of taxable income for a single filer ($98,900 jointly), the 15% band up to $545,500 ($613,700 jointly) and 20% above that, on 2026 figures.

The IRS treats crypto as property. Selling a coin, swapping it for another and spending it are all disposals, and each one carries its own basis and holding period on Form 8949 and Schedule D. Import your exchange CSVs and the calculator matches the trades first in, first out.

If you sell a stock or ETF at a loss and buy a substantially identical security within 30 days before or after the sale, the loss is disallowed under the wash sale rule (section 1091). The calculator lists wash sales in its checklist so you can adjust the basis yourself.

Losses net against gains of the same type first, short-term against short-term and long-term against long-term, and then the two results offset each other. If losses still exceed gains, you deduct up to $3,000 a year against ordinary income ($1,500 if married filing separately) and carry the rest into later years with no time limit. A carried loss keeps its short-term or long-term character.

The calculator applies the netting and the annual limit and shows what carries forward. Type the loss you brought in from your last return into section 3.

Report sales on Form 8949 and Schedule D with your Form 1040, due on April 15 after the tax year ends. A large gain can also create an estimated tax bill: when withholding does not cover the tax on the sale, the IRS expects quarterly payments on April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15.

The calculator covers one calendar year at a time. A sale dated outside the year you have open is left out of the numbers, so open a return for each year you sold in.