Home Sale Capital Gains Tax Calculator (2026)

Up to $250,000 if you are single or head of household, and up to $500,000 on a joint return if both spouses meet the residence test (only one has to meet the ownership test), when you owned the home and used it as your main home for at least 24 of the last 60 months before the sale and did not exclude the gain from another home sale in the last 24 months (26 U.S.C. 121; Publication 523). The months do not have to be consecutive.

Example: a single owner bought for $400,000 with $6,000 of closing costs, spent $30,000 on improvements, and sells for $750,000 paying $45,000 of selling costs. The gain is $269,000; $250,000 is excluded, so $19,000 is taxable. With $90,000 of other income the tax is $2,850: all of it at 15%, because the taxable income is above the 0% limit.

Your basis is what you paid, plus the closing costs of buying that are part of the price (abstract and title fees, legal fees, recording fees, survey fees, transfer taxes, owner's title insurance), plus improvements that add value or prolong the life of the home (an addition, a new roof, a remodeled kitchen, landscaping), less depreciation and certain credits and casualty payments. Repairs and maintenance (painting, fixing leaks) are not added, and neither are the costs of getting the loan: points, appraisal and credit report fees, mortgage insurance, loan fees (Publication 523, Basis Adjustments). Selling costs are subtracted from the sale price, not added to basis; the effect on the gain is the same.

Not necessarily. If the main reason for selling was a work-related move (a new job at least 50 miles farther from the home), a health-related move, or an unforeseeable event (a death, divorce, unemployment, a disaster and similar), you get a partial exclusion: the shortest of the months you lived there, the months you owned it, and the months since your last exclusion, divided by 24, times $250,000 (Publication 523, Worksheet 1; each spouse separately on a joint return). Example: sold after 12 months for a work move: 12 ÷ 24 × $250,000 = $125,000. With a $200,000 gain, $75,000 would be taxable. Without a qualifying reason there is no exclusion at all.

A home you owned for more than a year is a long-term capital asset, so the taxable gain is taxed at 0%, 15% or 20% depending on where it lands on top of your other taxable income (the table above), not on the gain alone. A couple with $300,000 of other income and a $100,000 taxable gain (after a $500,000 exclusion on a $600,000gain) pays 15% on all of it: $15,000, because their taxable income is already above $98,900.

The taxable gain also counts as net investment income, so if your modified AGI (with the gain) is over $200,000 ($250,000 joint) you pay an extra 3.8% on the smaller of the gain and the excess over that threshold (26 U.S.C. 1411): $3,800 for the couple above. The part of the gain excluded under section 121 is never net investment income (Instructions for Form 8960).

Depreciation you took, or could have taken, after May 6, 1997 cannot be excluded; it is taxed as unrecaptured section 1250 gain, at your ordinary rate up to a maximum of 25%. If you also had months after 2008 when the home was not your main home (before you last lived there), part of the rest of the gain is allocated to those months and cannot be excluded either: months of nonqualified use divided by months owned. Publication 523's own example: bought for $400,000, rented for 2 years ($20,000 of depreciation), lived in it for 2 years, sold for $700,000 after 5 years of ownership: $20,000 recaptured, $120,000 allocated to the rental years and taxed as long-term gain, and the other $180,000 excluded. Rental months after the last day you lived there do not count against you. This calculator does not handle a separately rented part of the property, such as one unit of a duplex.

You must report it if part of the gain is taxable, if you received a Form 1099-S (report it on Form 8949 even with no taxable gain), or if you choose to report a gain you could exclude. If none of those applies, you do not have to report the sale (Publication 523, Reporting Gain or Loss on Your Home Sale). A loss on the sale of your main home is not deductible.

Common reasons: the Tax Table, which this calculator replaces with the exact bracket formula (a difference of a few dollars); state tax (this uses one flat rate you type); credits, the alternative minimum tax or other income items that are not in the inputs; a gain that is partly from a rental or business portion of the property; a basis that has other adjustments (energy credits, casualty losses, a spouse's date-of-death value step-up); and dates: the tests count to the date of sale, which is the date on Form 1099-S or the date title transferred.