Two percentages applied one after another trip people up in a specific way: the instinct is to add them, and that instinct is wrong.<\/p>\n
If something is 80% of a value, and you then want 25% of that, it’s tempting to think “25% and 80%, so roughly 105% or maybe I should subtract, 55%.” Neither is right. Percentages that apply one after another multiply, they don’t add or subtract.<\/p>\n
To find a percentage of a percentage: convert both to decimals, multiply them, then convert back to a percentage.<\/p>\n
Result = (Percentage 1 \u00f7 100) \u00d7 (Percentage 2 \u00f7 100) \u00d7 100<\/strong><\/p>\n So 25% of 80% is: (25 \u00f7 100) \u00d7 (80 \u00f7 100) \u00d7 100 = 0.25 \u00d7 0.8 \u00d7 100 = 20%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This isn’t just a math-class exercise. A few real situations where percentages stack instead of add:<\/p>\n Whenever a percentage is applied to a result that’s already a percentage of something else, multiply the two decimal forms together. Adding them only works when both percentages are separately measuring a share of the exact same original whole, which stacked discounts, compounded tax, and multi-stage pass rates never are.<\/p>\n Our Percentage of a Number Calculator<\/a> handles both a straightforward percentage of a value and a percentage of a percentage, so you don’t have to do the decimal conversion by hand.<\/p>\n Convert both to decimals, multiply them, and turn the result back into a percentage. For example, 25% of 80% = 0.25 \u00d7 0.8 = 0.20, or 20%.<\/p>\n No. The second discount applies to the already-reduced price, so the total is 1 \u2212 (0.8 \u00d7 0.9) = 28% off, not 30%.<\/p>\n Only when both percentages are shares of the same original whole, such as 20% of a budget on rent and 10% on food, which together make 30% of that budget.<\/p>\n 25% of 80% isn’t 105%, and it isn’t 20 percentage points either. Here’s the actual math behind stacking two percentages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-percentages-shopping-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenesttools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where this actually shows up<\/h2>\n
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The one-line takeaway<\/h2>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
How do you calculate a percentage of a percentage?<\/h3>\n
Is 20% off plus an extra 10% off the same as 30% off?<\/h3>\n
When can you add percentages together?<\/h3>\n
Related Reading<\/h2>\n
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