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The same gain can be partly tax-free. Stacking decides how much.
Most capital gains calculators tax the whole gain at one rate — wrong. Long-term gains stack on top of your ordinary income, so the same sale can be partly 0%, partly 15%, and partly 20%. This calculator applies the real 2026 breakpoints from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, handles short-term gains at ordinary rates, and adds the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax with its frozen-2013 thresholds that catch more households every year.
Anyone about to sell stock, crypto, or a property uses it before the sale, not after: the stacking math means timing the sale across December and January — or holding one more month past the one-year line — can move thousands of dollars between brackets. It turns "what will I owe" into an exact number.
Long-term gains (assets held over a year): 0% up to $49,450 taxable income single / $98,900 joint, 15% up to $545,500 / $613,700, and 20% above that. Short-term gains get no special rate — they are taxed as ordinary income at your bracket, up to 37%. Qualified dividends use the same 0/15/20 long-term schedule.
Ordinary income fills the brackets first, then the gain stacks on top. Example: married couple with $70,000 of taxable ordinary income and a $40,000 long-term gain — the 0% band runs to $98,900, so the first $28,900 of the gain is tax-free and only the remaining $11,100 is taxed at 15%: $1,665 total. There is no cliff where the whole gain jumps to a higher rate.
A surtax on investment income — including capital gains — once MAGI passes $200,000 single or $250,000 joint. It applies to the lesser of your net investment income or the MAGI excess, and those thresholds have never been inflation-adjusted since 2013, so wage growth alone drags more households in each year. The true top federal rate on long-term gains is 23.8%, not 20%.