Capital Gains Tax Rates for 2026 in One Dated Table: the 0%, 15% and 20% Rows, and What Selling One Day Early Costs

The US article assumes you know which row of the ladder your sale lands in. Most sellers find that out on the tax-return side of the transaction, after the money moved. This is the dated version: every 2026 capital gains rate row tied to the document that sets it, one $10,000 sale counted twice — once held, once sold one day early — and beside the US table what happens on this side of the border, where the ladder does not exist.

I have spent 28 years in the Canadian benefits and pension world, and since 2021 I have written the Canadian Vehicle. That is why this page keeps a second column: a US rate table without the Canadian treatment beside it is half the picture, and the trap in this table has no Canadian counterpart at all.

Long term and short term — the dated rule

The rule that decides which side of the table a sale lands on is not about the size of the gain. It is about the calendar. The IRS states it on its capital gains topic page (Topic 409, pulled October 4, 2026): hold the asset more than one year before you dispose of it, and the gain is long-term; hold it one year or less, and it is short-term. And the counting has its own rule: you count from the day after the day you acquired the asset, through and including the day you disposed of it.

That second sentence is where people lose money, and the worked example below counts the dollars.

The rate consequence, from the same page: net short-term capital gains are taxed as ordinary income, at the graduated rates that apply to your wages — 10% up to 37%. Long-term net gains get the ladder: 0%, 15% or 20%, by taxable income. Two sale dates that look identical on a brokerage statement are two different tax documents.

The 2026 rate table

The dated document for the 2026 capital gains thresholds is IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, in effect October 9, 2025 — the inflation-adjustment procedure I read here as a PDF, section 4.03, not a blog’s summary of it. It prints two numbers per filing status: the ceiling up to which the long-term gain is taxed at 0%, and the ceiling up to which it is taxed at 15%. Above the second ceiling, the rate is 20%.

Two readings of the table that change its meaning:

• The rows are measured on taxable income, not on pay. Taxable income is what is left after the standard deduction — $16,100 single or separately, $32,200 jointly, $24,150 head of household, all three from the same rev. proc., section 4.14. A single filer at $64,000 of wages has $47,900 of taxable income: inside the 0% band.
• The 0% row is the row most sellers skip. A long-term gain that fills only space below your status’s first ceiling is taxed at zero. Not deferred — zero.

The short-term column. A short-term gain does not enter the ladder at all. It stacks onto wages and rides the ordinary brackets — for a single filer in 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32, section 4.01, Table 3): 10% to $12,400 of taxable income, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, 24% to $201,775, and up from there. The same $10,000 of gain can cost $0, $832.50 or $1,660 — the worked examples below show which is which.

The rows outside the ladder. The same Topic 409 page lists the exceptions: the taxable part of a §1202 small-business stock gain and collectibles (coins, art) are taxed at a maximum 28%; unrecaptured §1250 gain on real property at a maximum 25%. And if losses exceed gains for the year, the deduction against other income is capped at $3,000 ($1,500 separately filed), with the excess carried forward — that mechanism is its own page someday; this page is the rates.

One note on the document, because the two disagree. The IRS topic page, as I pulled it on October 4, 2026, still printed the 2025 thresholds (0% up to $48,350 single). The rev. proc. is the document, the topic page is the summary, and where a summary trails the document, the document wins — the same split I had to work through on the limits table between the news release and the notice.

The 3.8% that rides on top

Above certain income there is a second number on the same gain: the net investment income tax — 3.8%, on the IRS page that governs it (irs.gov/individuals/net-investment-income-tax, pulled October 4, 2026). It charges 3.8% of the lesser of your net investment income or the amount by which your modified adjusted gross income exceeds the threshold: $250,000 married filing jointly, $200,000 single or head of household, $125,000 filing separately.

The thresholds are called statutory in the source, and that word means something: nothing in the inflation procedure moves them. Since January 1, 2013 they are the row that does not move — while every ceiling in the table above grew with the year. Net investment income includes capital gains, dividends, interest and rent; it does not include wages. A gain in the 15% band under a threshold over $200,000 is a 15% gain with 3.8% on top; the top of the ladder, where a gain sits above the 15% ceiling and the income above the NIIT threshold, is 23.8% on the same dollar.

A worked sale: the tax counted

One seller, one dated set of assumptions, arithmetic shown. A single filer in 2026. Taxable income $45,000 before the gain (after the $16,100 standard deduction). They sell a position at a $10,000 long-term gain.

First, the tax on the income without the gain — Table 3: $1,240 plus 12% of what is over $12,400:

$1,240 + 0.12 × ($45,000 − $12,400) = $1,240 + $3,912 = $5,152.00

Now the gain, stacked on top. Ordinary income fills $45,000 of the ladder; the 0% band runs to $49,450, so $4,450 of the gain falls in the 0% row, and only the rest reaches 15%:

$49,450 − $45,000 = $4,450 at 0% = $0.00 $10,000 − $4,450 = $5,550 at 15% = $832.50

The sale costs $832.50 — 8.3 cents on the gain. Total tax for the year: $5,152.00 + $832.50 = $5,984.50.

Same seller, different year’s income: taxable income $35,000, same $10,000 long-term gain. The whole gain sits under $49,450. Tax on the gain: $0.00. That is not a credit or a trick; it is the first row of the table doing the work it is written to do.

And the same seller at the other end: married filing jointly, $310,000 of modified adjusted gross income, $10,000 of the gain long-term. Taxable income before the gain clears $98,900 comfortably, so none of the gain gets the 0% row; it sits at 15% — $1,500.00 — and the NIIT charges 3.8% of the whole $10,000 (the MAGI is $60,000 over the $250,000 threshold, so the lesser figure is the investment income itself): $380.00. Total $1,880.00, an 18.8% bite. The rates stack.

The trap: one day on one position

Now the same sale, sold wrong. Take the first seller — single, $45,000 of taxable income, the $10,000 gain.

The position was bought September 15, 2025. Counting from the day after — September 16 — a sale on September 15, 2026 is day 365: one year or less, short-term. A sale on September 16, 2026 is day 366: more than one year, long-term. One calendar day apart, and the gain crosses from the ladder to the ordinary table.

The short-term bill, counted the long way. The $10,000 stacks on $45,000 of taxable income, topping the 12% row at $50,400 and spilling into the 22% row:

$5,400 × 12% = $648.00 $4,600 × 22% = $1,012.00 tax on the gain, held one day short: $1,660.00

The same $10,000, one day later, was $832.50. The one day costs $827.50 — double the tax on the same gain, from a sale date chosen without looking at the acquisition date. The trap is not complicated and it is not rare; it is one position whose paperwork no one checked, and it is the most expensive single day in this table. (The exceptions — property acquired by gift, property from an estate, commodity futures — are in the IRS’s own publications 544 and 550; this page is the rates, and the rates say: look at the buy date before the sell date.)

On this side of the border

The US article assumes a ladder you do not have. Here is what the sale actually costs in Canada, from the statute rather than the summary: Income Tax Act section 38 (the Justice Laws consolidation, current to September 21, 2026, read October 4, 2026) — a taxpayer’s taxable capital gain is ½ of the capital gain, and that half rides your ordinary marginal rates. There is no 0% row, no 15% row, no 20% row, and the section has no holding-period line at all: sell after a week or after a decade, the half is a half. The US vehicle does not exist here — neither the ladder nor its one-day trap.

What does exist here is the vehicle that changes the question:

• The TFSA — investment income inside it, capital gains included, is generally not taxed even when withdrawn; the 2026 room is $7,000, and the room is the number that matters. A $10,000 gain inside the TFSA costs $0.00 and asks nothing of any table.
• The RRSP — the sale inside it is not a taxable event at all; the tax waits for the withdrawal and arrives as ordinary income, the deduction now and the tax then. The deduction is not the growth, and a US rate ladder cannot apply to growth that has its own tax day.
• The RRSP room, for completeness, is 18% of last year’s earned income — the 2026 cap $33,810 — and the pension adjustment reduces it where a group pension is in the picture. Both numbers are dated in the contribution-limits table.

So the US seller plays the calendar and the bracket; the Canadian seller picks the vehicle. The ladder is a US game with US rules, and the table above is its dated rulebook.

Where the table sits

The rates only meet a real sale. The pages that decide whether a sale happens at all:

• Before any taxable sale — the contribution-limits table is the first move, because every dollar inside a 401(k), an IRA, an RRSP or a TFSA sits outside this table entirely: Every retirement contribution limit for 2026.
• Inside a taxable account — the wrapper chooses some of your tax for you: ETFs’ in-kind redemption machinery makes the same index more tax-efficient than its mutual-fund twin, counted at a dollar level in the index fund vs. ETF cost comparison.
• Before the first dollar is invested — if the position being weighed is somebody’s whole start, the $50 answer with dated numbers is starting to invest with little money.
• After the tax is counted — the growth projections on this site run on rates the tax has never touched; the compound interest tables say so on the page, and after a big taxable sale, the honest version of any row of them is smaller by your rate.

So the ladder, the 3.8%, and the trap, stated for the document that sets them: the 2026 ceilings are $49,450 and $545,500 for a single filer, $98,900 and $613,700 for a joint return — Rev. Proc. 2025-32, in effect October 9, 2025 — the short-term row pays the ordinary table, and one calendar day on a single position is worth $827.50 on a $10,000 gain at $45,000 of income. On this side of the border there is no ladder to fall off — there is the TFSA, the RRSP, and the room. The room is the number that matters. This year’s is dated.