Caleb bought groceries and paid $1.60$ in sales tax. The sales tax rate is $2.5\%$ . What was the price of Caleb's groceries, before tax?

Full solution

Q. Caleb bought groceries and paid

1.60

in sales tax. The sales tax rate is

2.5\%

. What was the price of Caleb's groceries, before tax?

Calculate Total Amount: To find the price of Caleb's groceries before tax, we need to calculate the total amount paid without the sales tax. The sales tax is given as $2.5\%$ , and the amount of sales tax paid is $\$1.60$ . We can set up the equation where the price of the groceries before tax is represented by $P$ , and the sales tax rate is $0.025$ ( $2.5\%$ as a decimal). The equation is $P \times 0.025 = 1.60$ .
Set Up Equation: To find $P$ , we need to divide the amount of sales tax paid by the sales tax rate. So, we divide $\$1.60$ by $0.025$ to get $P$ . The calculation is $\frac{1.60}{0.025} = P$ .
Divide to Find P: Performing the division, we get $P = 64$ . This means that the price of Caleb's groceries before tax was $\$64$ .