Calculadora del impuesto a las remesas de EE. UU. (2026)

What the tax is charged on

Section 4475 imposes 1% on the total amount that will be transferred to the designated recipient — including any promotional bonus the provider or a third party adds. Provider fees, state and local levies, and the 1% tax itself are all excluded from that base, so this is never a tax on the fee and never a tax on tax.

That is why the IRS's own worked example lands where it does: $1,000.00 in cash plus a $5.00 bonus gives a base of $1,005.00 and a tax of $10.05, even though the sender also pays a $20.00 fee and $12.00 of state tax on the same transaction.

Neither the statute nor the proposed regulations prescribe a rounding convention for the 1% computation. This calculator shows the exact figure and rounds to cents only for display; that presentation is our convention, not a legal rule.

Only cash-type funding is taxed

The tax reaches a transfer only when the sender provides cash, a money order, a cashier's check or a traveler's check — and, under the proposed regulations, when the provider cashes the sender's personal or business check and that cash funds the transfer. The proposed regulations call that an exclusive list.

Money withdrawn from a US financial-institution account, and transfers funded with a US-issued debit or credit card, are excluded by §4475(d). The proposed regulations extend the same outcome to general-use prepaid cards, store gift cards and a personal check handed straight to the provider. On $500.00 that is the difference between $513.00 and $508.00 at the counter.

Converting cash into another instrument at the provider and sending it straight on does not work: the anti-avoidance rule at Prop. Reg. §49.4475-1(d)(4) lets the Secretary recharacterize the series according to its substance, and the regulation's own example does exactly that to a cash-to-prepaid-card transfer.

The $15.00 floor is a cliff

A transfer amount of $15.00 or less is not a "remittance transfer" under 12 CFR §1005.30(e)(2)(i), so §4475 never attaches. One cent more and the whole amount is in scope: $15.01 is taxed $0.15, not a penny of tax on the one-cent excess.

Splitting a larger transfer into sub-$15.00 pieces to stay under that line is exactly the behaviour the anti-avoidance rule addresses, and §4475(f) additionally pulls the §7701(l) anti-conduit rules into the section.

What it adds to what sending money already costs

The World Bank measures the total cost of a remittance — the provider's fee plus the margin by which its exchange rate sits above the interbank rate — as a percentage of the amount sent, on a $200.00 transfer. Section 4475 taxes that same amount, so for a cash-funded transfer the tax adds exactly 1.00 percentage point to the published cost ratio.

On the Q3 2025 figures that takes the Mexico corridor from 4.53% to 5.53%, and pushes 4 of the 6 largest US corridors over the 5% per-corridor ceiling in UN Sustainable Development Goal target 10.c. One caveat on that comparison: the SDG ceiling is formally measured on the SmaRT average — the three cheapest qualifying services in a corridor — while the figures here are the corridor-wide averages, which run higher.

Against the global average total cost of 6.36% for sending $200.00, the tax remains the smaller part of what a transfer loses. Fees and exchange-rate margin are the larger and much older problem, and the compounding unfairness is that cash is both the more expensive channel and the only one that carries the tax.

Those percentages are measured at $200.00 and embed a largely fixed fee, so this calculator will not extrapolate them linearly to bigger transfers — above the benchmark it labels the corridor figure illustrative. The 1% tax has no such limitation; it is linear and exact at every amount.

Who pays it and who hands it over

The sender is liable for the tax under §4475(b)(1), but the provider collects it at the counter and remits it quarterly on Form 720 under §4475(b)(2), with semimonthly deposits. If the provider fails to collect it, §4475(b)(3) makes the provider pay it. Senders file nothing.

It should reach the sender as a separate "Transfer Taxes" line on both the pre-payment disclosure and the receipt, alongside "Transfer Fees" (12 CFR §1005.31(b)(1)–(2)). The proposed regulations do not address Regulation E disclosure, so treat that mapping as expected practice rather than as confirmed IRS or CFPB guidance.

Three scope limits catch people out. A transfer to Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam or the District of Columbia is not a remittance transfer, because those are "States" — so it is not taxed. A person who provided 500 or fewer remittance transfers in both the previous and the current calendar year is not a remittance transfer provider at all (12 CFR §1005.30(f)(2)) and does not collect. And the definition reaches consumers: the sender has to be sending primarily for personal, family or household purposes, so business-to-business payments sit outside it.