Question

Find the selling price of a towel of Rs.50 when a sales tax of $5\%$ is added on it.

Answer 1

Here we use the concept of percentage and taking the initial cost given in the statement of the question we add the sales tax percentage of the initial cost to the initial cost we get the cost of object after sales tax.

• We calculate $m\%$ of x as $\dfrac{m}{{100}} \times x$
• Sales tax is a consumption tax that is imposed by the government on sale of goods and services.

Complete answer:
The initial cost of the object costs Rs.50 before the sales tax.
Sales tax is a consumption tax that is imposed by the government on sale of goods and services which means that it depends on the value of the object on which the tax is being applied.
Since, sales tax is $5\%$ of the cost.
From the method of calculation of percentage we can find the value of $5\%$ of Rs.50.
$\Rightarrow$SALES TAX $= \dfrac{5}{{100}} \times 50$
Cancel the factors from numerator and denominator.
$\Rightarrow$SALES TAX $= \dfrac{{25}}{{10}}$
Write the value of SALES TAX in terms of decimal by removing the denominator and placing the decimal in the numerator at first place from right side.
$\Rightarrow$SALES TAX $= 2.5$
Final cost of the object $=$Initial cost of object $+$SALES TAX
$\Rightarrow$Final cost $= 50 + 2.5$
$\Rightarrow$Final cost $= 52.5$
Since selling price means the price at which an item is sold, then the selling price of towel is Rs.52.5

$\therefore$Selling price of towel is Rs.52.5.

Note: Students are likely to make mistakes while calculating the percentage. They should not attempt to divide the fraction instead use the method of writing decimal to write the value whenever we have denominators like 10, 100 etc. Also, keep in mind the final cost is not the Value of SALES TAX it is the final value after we add the value of SALES TAX to the initial cost.