Subtracting Taxes from Earnings

Date: 11/21/95 at 10:36:41
From: Anonymous
Subject: State sales tax

 Customers at Flo's Meat Market must pay 6% state sales tax.  One
day Flo takes in $2650, including tax.  How much of the $2650 does Flo 
have left after sending the tax money to the state?

Date: 11/30/95 at 0:46:58
From: Doctor Ken
Subject: Re: State sales tax

Hello!

There's one thing that I'm going to assume about your problem, something
that I didn't even know was an issue.  Our archivist, Sarah Seastone, 
pointed out that when merchants collect 6% (for example) sales tax, 
they get to keep a very small percentage of that money for themselves, 
and give slightly less than the entire 6% to the state.

But I'll assume that you don't care about that part.  What we want to do 
is get an equation, and then the rest is easy.  Let x be the price of 
all the stuff people bought _before_ charging the tax.  That's the same 
as the amount Flo gets to keep after sending the tax to the state.  So 
we know that x plus 6% of x equals $2650.  How would you write that as 
an equation?  Once you have that, you can solve for x and you'll be 
done!

-Doctor Ken,  The Geometry Forum