Final answer:
The cost of dinner before tax is calculated by dividing the total bill of $117.69 by 1 plus the sales tax rate of 8.25% converted to decimal (1 + 0.0825).
Step-by-step explanation:
To calculate the price of dinner before tax, you must first understand that the total bill includes the original cost plus the sales tax. The sales tax rate is given as 8.25%, so you should convert this percentage to a decimal for calculation by dividing by 100, which makes it 0.0825. Now, to reverse-calculate the original price from the total with tax, you can use the formula: original price = total bill / (1 + sales tax rate).Given the total bill of $117.69 and a sales tax rate of 8.25%, the calculation for the original price will be $117.69 / (1 + 0.0825), which gives us the cost of dinner before tax.To round the result to the nearest cent, you should use a calculator for precise calculation.
Remember to keep your operations in the correct order to avoid any mistakes with the addition and division operations involved in the calculation.To find the price of dinner before tax, we need to subtract the sales tax from the total bill. The sales tax rate is 8.25%, which means that the price before tax is 100% - 8.25% = 91.75% of the total bill. To find this amount, we divide the total bill by 1.0825 (91.75% as a decimal) to get the price before tax: $117.69 รท 1.0825 = $108.75 (rounded to the nearest cent).