VAT calculator: add or remove VAT at any rate

Type a price, pick a rate, and this tool tells you the other two numbers: the net figure, the VAT, and the gross total. It works both directions. Enter €100 before VAT at 23% and you get €23 of VAT and €123 to charge. Enter €123 with VAT already inside it and you get €100 net and the same €23 sitting within it. The calculator runs above; the sections below explain what it is doing so you can trust the answer.

The two modes

Adding VAT starts from a net price and builds upward. Take €100 net at the 23% rate: the VAT is €23, so the gross price becomes €123. At the 13.5% rate the same €100 net becomes €113.50 gross. The net figure is what you keep; the VAT is what you collect on behalf of the tax authority.

Removing VAT starts from a gross price and works backward to find the net figure hidden inside it. Take €123 gross at 23%: the net is €100 and the VAT contained within it is €23. On a larger figure the shape is the same. A €500 gross price at 23% breaks down to €406.50 net and €93.50 VAT. The same €500 at 13.5% breaks down to €440.53 net and €59.47 VAT.

Removing VAT is division, not subtraction

The common mistake is to take a gross price and subtract the rate from it. It feels right and it is wrong. Start with €123 gross and knock off 23%, and you get €94.71. That is not the net price. The €123 already includes VAT, so 23% of €123 is a larger sum than the VAT that was actually added.

To reverse the sum correctly you divide, not subtract. At 23% the gross is 123% of the net, so you divide the gross by 1.23 to recover the net. €123 divided by 1.23 gives exactly €100, and the VAT is the €23 difference. That is why €94.71 never appears in the answer: the calculator divides the gross back to its net root rather than trimming a percentage off the top.

Where the rates come from

The rate menu is not typed in by hand. The tool reads a versioned dataset of the tax authority’s published VAT rates, and it updates when those rates change. The Irish rates it carries, attributed to Revenue’s published current-VAT-rates table and effective 1 January 2026 as of this page’s review, are: a standard rate of 23%, a reduced rate of 13.5%, a second reduced rate of 9%, a livestock rate of 4.8%, and a flat-rate addition for farmers of 4.5%. The livestock and flat-rate-farmer percentages are agricultural by name. Rates change at budgets, so the dataset is a snapshot, not a permanent fact.

Which rate applies to a given good or service is a separate question this tool does not answer. That mapping lives in the tax authority’s own rates database, and it is the only reliable place to check what a specific item carries. Pick the rate that applies to your item; the calculator handles the arithmetic once you have.

Method note

Everything runs in your browser. The price you type never leaves the page, nothing is sent to a server, and no figure is stored. The calculator holds the rate dataset locally and does the division and multiplication on your device.