New York sales tax rates by jurisdiction

There is no "New York sales tax rate"

The rate people quote — 8% — is the modal answer, not the answer. New York State imposes 4%, every county adds its own local tax, and some cities add theirs on top. The result is 81 separate jurisdictions with combined rates from 7% to 8.875%.

42 of the 62 counties do land on exactly 8%, which is why the shorthand persists and why it is usually harmless. It stops being harmless at the edges: Saratoga, Warren, Washington sit at 7%, and the five New York City counties plus Yonkers sit at 8.875%.

The city listings mean less than they look like they mean

Publication 718 lists 18 cities separately from their counties, under an "except" structure that reads as though those cities have different rates. Mostly they do not.

They are listed separately because they levy their own local sales tax and therefore need their own reporting code on a return. The combined rate usually comes out the same. Of the 18 cities listed, 17 match their county's rate exactly and only 1 actually differs:

So the practical rule is the opposite of what the layout suggests: the separate city listing tells you the reporting code differs, not the rate. Check both anyway — filing at the right rate under the wrong code is still a wrong return.

Do not use a ZIP code

The Department is unusually direct about this. Publication 718 states that postal zones "usually do not coincide with political boundaries" and that "the use of ZIP codes for tax collection results in a high degree of inaccurate tax reporting." It directs filers to reporting codes and to the Sales Tax Jurisdiction and Rate Lookup Service ^[2] .

This matters because a large number of commercial rate lookups — including several built into point-of-sale and e-commerce systems — are ZIP-based. If you are buying a business, it is worth finding out which method the seller has been using.

The MCTD component

17 of the 81 jurisdictions include an additional 3/8% imposed for the benefit of the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District. It is inside the combined rate rather than a separate line, and it is flagged as mctd in the dataset.

For a buyer moving a search across the district boundary, that 3/8% is one of several MCTD-related costs that appear together — the payroll mobility tax is the other one worth modelling.

Why a buyer should care about the rate

1. It sets the tax on the assets you are buying. New York sales tax applies to tangible personal property transferred in a bulk sale ^[3] . The equipment, fixtures and vehicles in your Class V purchase price allocation are that property — so the allocation you negotiate for federal depreciation purposes is also the base for a state tax bill payable at closing. Our allocation guide works that trade through.
2. It tells you whether the seller has been filing correctly. A business filing at the wrong rate, or under the wrong reporting code, has an exposure. In a bulk sale that exposure can follow the buyer unless the notice process is done properly — see the bulk-sale guide.
3. Near a boundary it is a competitive fact. A retailer at 8.875% competing against one at 8.375% a mile away is not on level terms on a large-ticket sale. That belongs in the revenue analysis, not just the compliance file.

What this dataset does not tell you

• Whether what the business sells is taxable. This is the rate, not the taxability rule, and taxability is the more common and more expensive question. Contractors in particular have to classify work as a capital improvement or a repair, which changes who pays what ^[4] .
• Special local levies or district taxes outside the combined rate Publication 718 states.
• Anything after 1 March 2025. Rates change. This is a snapshot of one publication, dated on the page, and the Department's lookup service is authoritative for today.
• Exemptions. Clothing thresholds, resale certificates, exempt organisations and manufacturing exemptions all sit outside this table.

How this was built

Publication 718 (revision 2/25, effective 1 March 2025) was downloaded as PDF from tax.ny.gov and parsed here ^[1] . Rates are published as vulgar fractions (8⅝, 8¾) and converted to decimals; the asterisk the Department uses to mark MCTD jurisdictions is carried through as a boolean.

The five New York City counties appear in the source only as cross-references to "New York City," which is the reporting jurisdiction. They are expanded here to their county and borough names so a lookup on "Kings" or "Brooklyn" resolves, with the shared reporting code retained.

Every count and rate on this page is computed from the parsed file at build time rather than typed, so the prose cannot drift from the data.

All 81 jurisdictions

Sorted by rate, highest first. "MCTD" marks a rate that includes the 3/8% Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District component.

Use the data

The whole dataset is available as JSON: /data/ny-sales-tax.json. It carries every jurisdiction with its rate, reporting code, county, type and MCTD flag, plus a meta block recording the source, its revision and effective date, and the retrieval date.

The underlying publication is a New York State government work. The parsing, structure and framing here are ours; use them freely and link back. If you are citing a rate for a filing rather than for analysis, confirm it against the Department's lookup service on the day — that is the authoritative answer, and this is a dated snapshot.