FREE Percent Applications Sales Tax Lesson | 7th Grade Math 7.RP.A.3

⭐ FREE 8-PAGE DAY 1 SALES TAX LESSON — GRADE 7 MATH PBL ⭐

Print and teach tomorrow! This FREE 8-page Day 1 lesson is pulled directly from the UM Printables Road Trip Budget Project, a 5-day Grade 7 Project-Based Learning unit on percent applications aligned to CCSS 7.RP.A.3.

Students learn to calculate sales tax on multi-item purchases, compare tax rates across states, and explain how the same purchase can have different final costs depending on location. The lesson is classroom-ready and provides a complete Day 1 experience so you can preview the instructional style and quality of the full unit.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✅ WHAT'S INSIDE THIS FREEBIE (8 PAGES) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Branded cover with FREE SAMPLE badge

• Teacher Overview — learning target, 45–50 minute lesson plan, and 7.RP.A.3 alignment

• State Sales-Tax Reference Table — 15 most-populous states with combined average rates

• Day 1 Student Page — worked example plus 4 real-world problems with full workspace

• Day 1 Answer Key — step-by-step worked solutions for all 4 problems

• Marketing page with direct link to the complete 55+ page unit on TPT

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 LEARNING TARGET ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"I can calculate sales tax on a multi-item purchase using any state's tax rate, and I can explain why the same item costs a different amount in different states."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📝 THE 4 REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Problem 1 — Snacks Basket** Students calculate sales tax on a multi-item purchase in Tennessee using a 9.47% rate.

**Problem 2 — Travel Gear on Sale** Students apply a 25% discount to an $89.99 sleeping bag before calculating the purchase cost in Michigan using a 6.00% rate.

**Problem 3 — Multi-State Comparison** Students compare the cost of the same $40 basket in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio.

**Problem 4 — Plan Your Own Snack Stop** Students complete a reroute analysis and justify their choice using real dollar amounts.

Every problem includes dedicated workspace, while the answer key shows the complete solution process.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🗓️ HOW TO USE — 45–50 MINUTES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**5 min — Launch:** Use a real receipt and ask why the final total exceeds the subtotal.

**10 min — Mini-Lesson:** Model the worked example of a $30 cooler purchased in Tennessee.

**25 min — Work Time:** Students complete the 4 problems independently or in pairs.

**5 min — Exit Ticket:** Use Problem 4 as the closing task.

The included answer key supports quick grading or student self-checking.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 WANT THE FULL 5-DAY UNIT? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This freebie is **Day 1 of the Road Trip Budget Project**, a 55+ page PBL unit covering the percent applications in 7.RP.A.3:

• **Day 1 — Sales Tax** • **Day 2 — Tip / Gratuity** • **Day 3 — Discount & Markup** • **Day 4 — Commission & Simple Interest** • **Day 5 — Percent of Change & Percent Error**

The full unit also includes a differentiated version for struggling learners, an extension menu for advanced learners, a 4-criterion analytic rubric, a complete answer key with annotated student exemplars, and a Travel Agent Pitch presentation guide.

👉 **Percent Applications Road Trip Budget Project | 7th Grade Math PBL**

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📁 FILE FORMAT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• 1 print-ready PDF • 8 pages • US Letter • Vector quality • Embedded fonts • Pages 3–5 can be printed for the core Day 1 lesson

The state tax table is fully editable in the complete unit.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 PERFECT FOR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• 7th grade math percent applications

• 6th grade accelerated math

• 8th grade review

• Sub plans

• Homeschool co-op math

• Summer school / credit recovery

• Financial literacy mini-lessons

• Sales-tax test preparation

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⭐ PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

If this free lesson saves you prep time, please consider leaving a review on TPT. Your feedback helps other teachers discover the resource and supports future UM Printables materials.

Follow the UM Printables store for new Grade 6–8 math PBL units.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LICENSE & TERMS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Free for single-classroom use. You may print and copy for your own students. Please direct colleagues to download their own copy from TPT rather than sharing the file.

Copyright © 2026 UM Printables. All rights reserved.