Tax year 2026 figures. Last updated .
Rates and amounts
What the tax actually costs, which ladder applies, and what changed for 2026.
- How much is capital gains tax?The dollar answer, at several income levels, and the two facts that decide which rate you land on.
- What is the long-term capital gains tax rate?The 0/15/20 ladder, the 2026 ceilings for every filing status, and how stacking decides which rung you reach.
- What is the capital gains tax rate for 2026?Which 2026 figures moved with inflation, which are frozen in statute, and where the official numbers come from.
- What are the capital gains tax brackets for 2026?Every 2026 threshold for all four filing statuses, and why capital gains have ceilings rather than brackets.
- What is short-term capital gains tax?There is no short-term rate — it is your ordinary rate. What the one-year line costs, and how it is counted.
Working it out, and when to pay
The order of operations, the federal layer end to end, the deadlines, and the levers that legitimately move the number.
- How is capital gains tax calculated?The seven steps in the order the code applies them, from adjusted basis through to the 3.8% surtax.
- When do you pay capital gains tax?Owed for the year the sale closes, often due quarterly before then. The dates, and the safe harbour.
- How to avoid capital gains taxSix legal levers that move the rate rather than hide the gain, each with the arithmetic behind it.
- How does federal capital gains tax work?The complete federal layer: the ladder, the two special rate groups, the surtax, and where the state layer begins.
Property and real estate
Three property types taxed three different ways, and the exclusion that covers most home sales entirely.
- How much is capital gains tax on real estate?Three property types, three different answers — and why a long-held rental costs more than the headline rates.
- How to avoid capital gains tax on real estateThe home-sale exclusion in detail, including the reduced exclusion most calculators compute incorrectly.
How these pages are written
Every worked example is generated from the engine at build time rather than typed in. When the tax data changes, the examples change with it, so a figure in the prose cannot drift away from the figure the calculator produces.
Every page states its sources. Federal figures come from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and the Internal Revenue Code; state figures come from each state's own code or revenue department. Nothing is filled in from memory, and where a figure cannot be verified the engine refuses to compute with it rather than guessing — see the methodology.
The pages are also checked against each other. A test measures the pairwise overlap between every pair of guides and fails the build if any two drift toward saying the same thing, because eleven near-identical pages would be worse than the one page they came from.
Looking for your state?
These guides cover the federal layer, which applies wherever you live. The state comparison sets out how each covered state treats a gain on top of it.