About Capital Gains Tax HQ
Capital Gains Tax HQ is made by Joseph Ellul. It exists because almost everything an American needs when they sell something has already been written down by the authority that will assess the return, and then split across a federal topic page, a state agency page and, in two states, a line of the state constitution. The record collects those sentences, reproduced exactly, each with its address and the day it was examined.
Why this site exists
The honest answer to most capital gains questions is dull: the authority that will assess the return has already written a sentence about it. Dull does not rank, so what fills the results instead is a paraphrase of a paraphrase, generally undated, usually attached to a product, and frequently describing a threshold that has since moved. One more explainer does not fix that. Putting the authority's sentence on the screen, with its address and the day it was examined, does: a reader can verify it and an adviser can cite it.
Who it is for
Somebody who has sold a house, a rental or a block of stock and wants the federal rules in the IRS's own words before they file.
Somebody comparing two states, who needs the same question answered by both authorities, side by side, in each one's own wording.
A CPA or enrolled agent who needs the citation rather than the summary, and wants to check it against the page before quoting it to a client.
What it does not do
- It never states a tax rate, threshold or deadline that the page it cites does not carry. If the guidance does not say it, this site does not say it.
- It never renders an empty cell. Where an authority publishes nothing on a question, the page says so and names the page that was read; a blank would be read as 'not taxed', and that is a claim nobody here is making.
- It never paraphrases a quotation into an answer, and it never recommends a course of action. Deciding what to do with a rule is an adviser's job, not a reference's.
- It takes no share of any fee, refund or saving. An adviser pays a flat fee for an enquiry and nothing else, and no adviser can buy a placement.
What is on this site
1 guides, each with its sources on the page , 14 answers to the questions around them , and the comparison.
- Work out the tax on a capital gain: A capital gain is one of the few numbers you can work out exactly from published figures, and almost nobody does, because the figures live on four separate IRS pages and the one that decides most of the answer is not a rate at all.
Where the figures come from
Primary guidance published by each taxing authority, and the state constitution where the tax is barred by one, each page read through the estate fetch box on 2026-09-11 and its reduction committed under research/data/capital-gains-guidance/
Who answers for it
Joseph Ellul, Publisher; responsible for which pages are read, which sentence answers which question, and for correcting anything on this site that misquotes a source.
Reach us
Contact for a question about the site, or contact@capitalgainstaxhq.com. The legal terms are on Terms and Privacy.