July 30, 2026 · 4 min read

OSRS GE Tax Guide 2026 — How the 2% Grand Exchange Tax Works

In May 2025, Jagex raised the Grand Exchange tax from 1% to 2%. Every sale on the GE now incurs a 2% levy on the sale price, taken from the seller's proceeds. This is not optional and cannot be avoided — it's deducted automatically when your sell offer completes.

The exact calculation

Tax = min(0.02 × sell_price, 5,000,000 GP) per transaction.

• Sell an item for 1,000 GP → tax is 20 GP → you receive 980 GP
• Sell an item for 100,000 GP → tax is 2,000 GP → you receive 98,000 GP
• Sell an item for 10,000,000 GP → tax is 200,000 GP → you receive 9,800,000 GP
• Sell an item for 300,000,000 GP → tax is capped at 5,000,000 GP → you receive 295,000,000 GP

The 5,000,000 GP cap applies when the sell price exceeds 250,000,000 GP. Items above that threshold are always taxed at exactly 5M GP regardless of price. This makes extremely high-value items (Twisted Bow, Scythe of Vitur) relatively tax-efficient per GP compared to mid-range items.

Which items are exempt

A small set of items are permanently exempt from GE tax. These are primarily items that function as currency alternatives or have special trading rules: Old School bonds, certain quest-related untradeable-to-tradeable items, and a handful of others designated by Jagex. The exemption list is short — the vast majority of tradeable items are taxed.

What this means for flipping

Tax is the single biggest change to flipping profitability since the GE was introduced. Before 2025, a 50 GP margin was profitable on most items. At 2% tax, a 50 GP margin on a 5,000 GP item means 100 GP tax — you're losing 50 GP on every unit. The minimum viable margin is now 2% of the sell price, and margins below that are guaranteed losses.

• Minimum viable margin = 2% of sell price (to break even on tax alone)
• Profitable margin must exceed 2% of sell price by your target profit
• High buy limit items with small margins need to be recalculated — many former staple flips are now marginal or loss-making
• Every gp/hr figure on FlipForge already deducts tax before showing you the number

Tax changes the F2P flip list more than P2P

F2P items tend to be cheaper, which means smaller absolute margins. A 30 GP spread on a 1,500 GP item was fine at 1% tax (15 GP tax, 15 GP profit). At 2% tax the same trade has 30 GP tax and zero profit. Many former F2P staple flips became unviable in May 2025. The actual F2P flip list shrank considerably — which is why accurate live recalculation matters more than ever.

The tax cap creates a unique opportunity in ultra-high value items

Above 250M GP sell price, the tax is fixed at 5M GP regardless of the item's price. A Twisted Bow trading at 1.3 billion GP pays 5M tax — less than 0.4% effective tax rate. If the spread on a 1.3B item is 30M GP, the effective margin after tax is 25M. The buy limit is usually 1 per 4 hours, but the GP per trade is substantial. This creates a distinct category of very-high-value long-horizon flipping that plays by different rules from commodity flipping.

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