Optional State Sales Tax Tables: Local Rates and the SALT Cap

The IRS’s optional state sales tax tables let you estimate your general sales tax deduction for 2026 without having saved a year’s worth of receipts. The tables live in the Instructions for Schedule A (Form 1040) and give you an average annual sales tax figure based on your state, your income, and your family size.¹ You add a local-rate adjustment, tack on the actual tax you paid on any qualifying big-ticket purchases, and put the total on Line 5a of Schedule A. The catch: this only helps if you itemize, and you have to choose between deducting sales taxes or state and local income taxes for the year.

When the Tables Are Worth Using

Federal law makes you pick one or the other on Line 5a: state and local income taxes, or state and local general sales taxes, not both.² The sales tax route almost always wins if you live in a state with no broad-based personal income tax. Nine states fit that description: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. In those states your income tax deduction is zero or close to it, so the tables give you something instead of nothing.

In income-tax states, the sales tax option can still come out ahead if you had unusually low income tax withheld or you made large taxable purchases during the year. Run both numbers and take the bigger one.

None of this matters unless you itemize. If your total Schedule A deductions don’t clear the standard deduction, the tables don’t help you.

What You Need to Look Up a Table Amount

The tables work as a grid: find your income row and your family-size column for your state, and the intersection is your estimated annual sales tax on everyday purchases. Four inputs drive the lookup.

Income for sales tax purposes. Start with adjusted gross income and add back certain nontaxable items that still fund spending, such as tax-exempt interest, veterans’ benefits, and nontaxable Social Security.³
Family size, based on exemptions. Larger households get a larger table figure at the same income.
State of residence. Each state has its own table reflecting the state-level rate and taxable base.
ZIP code. This is what pins down the local rate that gets applied on top of the state figure.

If you moved during the year, you use the table amount for each state and prorate: divide the annual figure by 365 and multiply by the days you lived at that address.³

The IRS also runs a free Sales Tax Deduction Calculator that performs the same lookup and math online. Enter filing status, income, ZIP code, and any major purchases and it returns a figure you can copy to Schedule A.⁴ It uses the same tables and local rates, so the result should match a careful hand calculation.

Adjusting for Local Sales Tax

The state tables reflect only the state-level rate. Most people also pay a county or city sales tax that can run from a fraction of a percent up to nearly 5% on top. You account for it separately using the worksheet in the Schedule A instructions.

The worksheet has you take the ratio of your local rate to your state rate and apply it to the state table figure. If your state rate is 6% and your local rate is 2%, you multiply the state amount by one-third (2 ÷ 6) to estimate the local tax and add it to the state number. If you lived in more than one locality during the year, each local adjustment gets prorated by the days you spent there, the same way the state figure does.³

Adding Sales Tax on Major Purchases

The tables cover routine spending on things like groceries, clothing, and household supplies. They leave out big, sporadic purchases because those would distort the averages. Instead, you add the actual sales tax you paid on qualifying large purchases on top of the table amount.⁴

Qualifying purchases include:³

Motor vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, motor homes, RVs, SUVs, vans, trucks, and off-road vehicles. Sales tax on a leased vehicle counts too.
Aircraft and boats, but only if the sales tax rate was the same as the general rate.
A home purchase (including mobile and prefabricated homes), a substantial addition, or a major renovation, if the tax rate matched the general sales tax rate. Building materials you bought directly for the work also count.

One limit worth knowing: if your state taxes vehicles at a higher rate than general merchandise, you can only add what you would have paid at the general rate. Anything above that is excluded. Hang on to sales contracts, invoices, and registration documents that show the tax paid, even if you use the tables for everything else.

The SALT Cap That Limits the Total

Whether you go the sales tax route or the income tax route, your combined state and local tax deduction sits under a federal cap. For 2026 that cap is $40,400 for most filers and $20,200 for married individuals filing separately.⁵ The cap covers your property taxes plus either your state income taxes or your sales taxes. The whole pile added together cannot exceed the limit.

Higher earners face a phase-down. On a joint return, the cap starts shrinking once modified adjusted gross income exceeds roughly $505,000 (the $500,000 base increased by 1% for 2026), losing 30 cents for every dollar above the threshold until it floors at $10,000. The married-filing-separately threshold is about half that. Most filers won’t hit the ceiling, but if your household is in the mid-six figures, work the math before assuming you get the full amount.

An AMT Boundary Worth Knowing

If you owe the alternative minimum tax, your SALT deduction is disallowed for AMT purposes, whether it’s built on income taxes or sales taxes.⁶ The sales tax deduction still reduces your regular tax; it just does nothing to lower the AMT. Tax software will flag this, but it’s the reason the work can end up producing no net benefit for some high-income filers.

Where the Number Goes and What to Keep

Your final sales tax figure — table amount, plus local-rate adjustment, plus any qualifying major-purchase tax — goes on Line 5a of Schedule A. Check the box indicating you’re claiming sales taxes rather than income taxes.⁷ Property taxes go on their own line, and everything totals up on Line 5e, which is where the SALT cap gets applied.

Keep the Sales Tax Deduction Worksheet (or the calculator printout) along with receipts and contracts for major purchases for at least three years after filing. That’s the standard IRS assessment window, and those are the documents they’ll ask for if the deduction is questioned.⁸ Bank and credit card statements can help fill gaps if a primary receipt is missing, though original documentation carries more weight.⁹

Tables or Actual Receipts

You are never required to use the tables. If you kept every receipt and can total your actual general sales tax paid, you can claim that number instead. The tables are there as a shortcut for people who didn’t track spending, and for most filers they produce a fair estimate. If you live in a high-rate state and spent heavily on taxable goods, actual receipts might beat the tables. The trade-off is the record keeping, which is why the tables exist in the first place.¹

1
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 503, Deductible Taxes
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 164 – Taxes
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule A (Form 1040)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Use the Sales Tax Deduction Calculator
5
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 56 – Adjustments in Computing Alternative Minimum Taxable Income
7
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule A (Form 1040)
8
Internal Revenue Service. How Long Should I Keep Records
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Internal Revenue Service. Burden of Proof