How this number is made
A penny-stock profit is the same subtraction as any other stock: cash you receive minus cash you paid. The difference is the price. Under $1, the usual quote moves by $0.0001, so a price typed as 0.0001 has to stay 0.0001. Rounding it to the nearest cent turns the trade into zero. The stock-sale page on this site does that rounding. This page does not.
- Type the buy and sell prices with every digit after the decimal. $0.0001, $0.001, and $0.01 are three different prices.
- Type the number of shares you bought. Commissions are separate fields, so they are not baked into the price.
- Pick a state to fill the state rate, then edit the percent if your bracket is different. Federal tax starts this gain in the lowest bracket. It does not include wages.
Formula
Cost of the shares = shares × buy price. Profit = sale proceeds − sell fees − cost of the shares − buy fees. Short-term tax is ordinary tax on the gain alone, starting at the bottom 2026 bracket. Long-term tax walks the gain through the 2026 0% / 15% / 20% thresholds, also starting from zero. State tax = gain × the state percent. The 2×, 5×, 10×, and 100× rows are multiples of the buy price, before tax.
Worked example
$500 of shares at $0.0001 is 5,000,000 shares. A sale at $0.001 is a 10× move in the price. A $6.95 commission on the buy and again on the sell makes cash in $506.95 and cash out $4,993.05. Profit before tax is $4,486.10. Held a year or less, with no other taxable income and a single return, that gain is in the 10% ordinary bracket. Federal tax is $448.61. Georgia at 5.19% adds $232.83. Together that is $681.44, so $3,804.66 is left. Held more than a year, the same gain is inside the 0% long-term band, so federal tax is $0. The state amount stays $232.83.
Questions
Will a price of $0.0001 get rounded away?
Not here. The price is kept to the digits you type, including $0.0001 and prices finer than that. Dollar totals round to the nearest cent, because that is how cash in a brokerage account settles. A result that is itself under one cent is still shown, instead of becoming $0.00.
Why are there two tax amounts?
A gain held one year or less is ordinary income. A gain held more than a year uses the 0%, 15%, and 20% rates. Both amounts are shown. The headline uses the one that matches Held, then subtracts the state percent. This page starts the gain at the bottom bracket. Wages are not in the tax, so someone with a paycheck will owe more than the figure here. The top bracket is the highest federal rate that touches this gain. The state percent does not change with the holding period. A loss is not refunded here.