Qualified Dividends and Capital Gain Tax Worksheet (2026)

One page of the 1040 instructions decides whether a $30,000 long-term gain costs you $0, $1,665 or $6,000, and most people never look at it. The qualified dividends and capital gain tax worksheet pulls the money the law taxes at 0, 15 and 20 percent out of your taxable income, stacks what is left underneath it, and then charges each slice of that money whatever band it lands in. Run your own year through the calculator below or copy the three examples.

The worksheet is not a form you mail anywhere. It is a page in the 1040 instructions and a script inside every tax program. It matters because it is the only place where your rate on investment income gets decided, and because the arithmetic is not your bracket rate. Below are the 2026 thresholds, the order the numbers go in, and the four situations where this worksheet is the wrong one.

What goes in: three numbers, no more

The worksheet asks for exactly three figures. Chasing anything else wastes the evening.

1. Taxable income. The taxable income line on Form 1040 (line 15 on the 2024 print, and the numbering moves whenever Congress adds a line, so read the form in front of you). This is what survives the standard deduction, which for 2026 is $16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly and $24,150 head of household.
2. Qualified dividends. Box 1b of each 1099-DIV, added up. Ordinary dividends sit in box 1a, and only the 1b amount gets the preferential treatment.
3. Net long-term capital gain. From Schedule D: the smaller of the net long-term line and the total net gain line. If Schedule D shows a loss on either, the worksheet takes -0- here, which is the single most common way people overpay their own estimate.

The 2026 rate bands

Two ceilings per filing status define everything. Below the first, the rate is zero. Between them, 15 percent. Above the second, 20 percent. The 3.8 percent net investment income surtax has its own threshold and stacks on top.

Filing status	Top of the 0% band	Top of the 15% band	Surtax threshold
Single	$49,450	$545,500	$200,000
Married filing jointly	$98,900	$613,700	$250,000
Head of household	$66,200	$579,600	$200,000
Married filing separately	$49,450	$306,850	$125,000

These are the 2026 inflation adjustments the IRS published in Rev. Proc. 2025-32 on 9 October 2025, cross-checked against Tax Foundation’s 2026 bracket table on 7 October 2026. The surtax thresholds are the exception: Congress set them in 2013 and has never indexed them, so $200,000 for a single filer is the same number it was thirteen years ago while wages are not.

The order the numbers go in

Three steps, in this sequence. Get the sequence wrong and the answer moves by thousands.

1. Add the qualified dividends to the net long-term gain. Call the total the preferential income.
2. Subtract it from taxable income. What is left is ordinary income (wages, interest, short-term gains, retirement withdrawals) and it occupies the rate bands first.
3. Now fill the bands from where ordinary income stopped. Any preferential income that still fits below the 0% ceiling is free. The rest goes to 15% until it hits the second ceiling. What survives that takes 20%.

Ordinary income eating the free band first is the whole mechanism. Two people with the same $30,000 gain can pay $0 and $4,500 for it, and the difference is the wages underneath.

Three worked examples

Status	Taxable income	Long-term gain	Qualified dividends	How the preferential income splits	Tax on it
Married filing jointly	$110,000	$30,000	$0	0% for $18,900, 15% for $11,100	$1,665
Single	$80,000	$25,000	$1,200	0% for $0, 15% for $26,200	$3,930
Single	$560,000	$60,000	$8,000	0% for $0, 15% for $53,500, 20% for $14,500	$10,925

The first row is the one worth studying. That joint couple has $1,665 of tax on $30,000 of investment income, an effective rate of 5.6%, because wages only filled part of the zero band. Move the same couple up the income scale and the free slice disappears; the second row pays 15 percent on every dollar of it. The third row is where the 20 percent rate first appears on this page: single filer, taxable income of $560,000, ordinary income of $492,000, so the 15 percent band has $53,500 of room left and the last $14,500 spills into 20 percent. That same year also clears the surtax threshold, adding $2,584.

Run your year through it

Four cases where this worksheet is the wrong tool

1. Collectibles and small-business stock. Gain on coins, precious metals and similar property is capped at 28 percent, and section 1202 exclusion has its own worksheet. The qualified dividend worksheet has no line for either.
2. Depreciation you did not pay back. Unrecaptured section 1250 gain from a rental or a converted property takes 25 percent. That rate does not exist on this worksheet, so the Schedule D Tax Worksheet takes over.
3. Foreign earned income. Form 2555 changes the way the bands fill, and the instructions send you to a different computation.
4. Alternative minimum tax. Nothing on this worksheet touches AMT. Form 6251 repeats the whole exercise with its own rules, and a large gain can trigger it even when the regular figure looks comfortable.

What this page leaves to the states

Every figure above is federal, and the states do not simply copy it. Nine jurisdictions take no income tax on wages in our own 2026 rate table (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming) so which band a gain lands in does not matter there. Washington is the exception hiding inside that list: it taxes no wages, but it runs a separate 7 percent capital gains excise on long-term gain above an annual deduction that was $278,000 for 2025, and it leaves real estate out of it entirely (Washington Department of Revenue, read 7 October 2026). Most of the remaining states start the return from your federal numbers and attach their own rate, and some tax the whole gain flat: 2.50% in Arizona and 4.40% in Colorado apply to long-term gain exactly as they do to a W-2, with no 0 percent band waiting underneath. If a sale lands in a state you only lived in for a 13-week contract, the source-state return comes first and the home state handles the credit afterwards: the filing order is in multi-state filing for travel nurses, the state rates sit in state-by-state income tax, and the two-state decision is in the state pair comparison.

Why a nurse with a brokerage account should care in a 13-week cycle

Two habits collide on this worksheet. A travel nurse who parks stipend money in index funds accumulates qualified dividends, and a nurse who sells appreciated positions mid-contract books long-term gain at the worst possible moment, on top of a year where the taxable housing amount already pushed ordinary income through the free band. The fix is a decision made in November, not April: sell before the ordinary income fills the bands, or spread it across two years.

Questions that come up after the calculator

Is this the same as Schedule D line 18?

No. Schedule D line 18 is the smaller of two net gain lines, and it is one of the three inputs the worksheet asks for. The worksheet is the computation you do after Schedule D is finished, and you only reach it once the form knows there is no 28 percent or 25 percent gain in the mix.

Do short-term gains get the 15 percent rate?

Never. Hold an asset 12 months or less and the gain is taxed with your wages, at ordinary rates up to 37 percent. The date in the trade confirmation, not the size of the gain, decides this.

My income is low. Is the answer really zero?

Yes, for the slice that fits. $98,900 of taxable income is the ceiling for a joint couple, and gain under that number is taxed at zero percent. This is the same band that makes the “tax-loss harvesting then repurchase” year look good on paper.

Does the 3.8 percent surtax come out of this worksheet?

No. The surtax is computed on Form 8960 against net investment income and modified AGI, using $200,000 for single filers and $250,000 jointly. Read it as a separate line sitting on top of the worksheet result. The calculator above estimates it because most people find the two amounts only after filing.

Where do qualified dividends come from if I have no 1099-DIV?

Then the line is zero, and only the capital gains side of the worksheet does work. Mutual funds inside a 401(k) or IRA produce no 1099-DIV at all while the money stays in the account; withdrawals from those accounts are ordinary income, and this page never applies to them.

Sources, checked 7 October 2026

• IRS, 2026 Cost of Living Adjustments and Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (9 October 2025): the 0% and 15% ceilings, the standard deduction.
• Tax Foundation, 2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates: the same thresholds, independently printed.
• IRS Topic No. 409, Capital gains and losses: rates, the $3,000 loss offset, holding periods.
• Form 1040 instructions, Qualified Dividends and Capital Gain Tax Worksheet, and Schedule D instructions, the three inputs and the cases that route you elsewhere.
• Washington Department of Revenue, Capital gains tax, the 7 percent excise and the $278,000 deduction for 2025.

This is general tax information, not advice on your return. The worksheet is one page of the 1040 instructions and it assumes facts a program can see and this calculator cannot. Michael Chen, CPA put the 2026 numbers in one place so you can check what software prints rather than trust it blind.