FC 27 tax calculator: what EA's 5% cut takes from a sale

How the 5% EA tax works

Every time a card or item sells on the transfer market, EA keeps 5% of the final sale. The buyer pays the full amount; the cut comes out of what the seller receives. List a player at 20,000 coins and, when it sells, 19,000 land in your club. The other 1,000 leave the game for good.

That last part is the reason the tax exists. It's a coin sink: by taking a slice of every trade, EA stops the total amount of coins in the economy from growing too fast, which would otherwise push card values ever higher.

A few details matter in practice:

• The tax is worked out on the final price, whether the card went at Buy Now or to a winning bid.
• Only the seller pays. A card you pick up costs exactly the figure on the listing.
• Listing is free. A card that doesn't sell costs you nothing and waits on your transfer list to be relisted.
• Quick selling and Squad Building Challenges aren't sales, so neither is taxed.
• The rate is the same 5% for every card, on every platform, in the game, the Web App and the Companion App alike.

The break-even formula

Because you keep 95% of a sale, the lowest price that gets your coins back is what you paid divided by 0.95:

Break-even = what you paid ÷ 0.95

In practice that's about 5.3% above what you paid. A card bought for 10,000 coins has to go for at least 10,527 just to cover itself. The calculator rounds up to the next whole coin, because rounding down would leave you a coin or two short.

For a profit target, add your margin first and divide second: (what you paid × 1.10) ÷ 0.95 gives the figure that leaves you 10% ahead once EA has taken its share. Swap 1.10 for 1.05, 1.20 or whatever margin you're after.

Price steps: the part people forget

The market doesn't accept any number you like. Listings move in fixed steps that grow as cards get more expensive, so the exact break-even figure often isn't something you can list at. In recent seasons the steps have been:

Always round the break-even figure up to the next valid step. Rounding down to the step below means a small loss on every card.

Worked examples

Round numbers to show how the maths plays out. The card values are examples, not market data.

The 9,500 row is a rare exact fit: 10,000 is both the break-even and a valid step, so the card comes back level. Most cards land somewhere between steps, and the step size eats into the margin. On cheap cards a single step can be most of the profit.

The same maths works for flips. Pick up a card at 40,000, list it at 45,000 and once it goes you receive 42,750. The profit is 2,750, not 5,000, because 2,250 went to tax.

Common mistakes

• Counting the listing figure as profit. What matters is what lands in your club, which is always 5% less than the sale.
• Chasing margins thinner than the tax. On a flip, anything under about 5.3% above what you paid loses coins, however good it looks on screen.
• Rounding to the nearest step instead of up. The nearest step is sometimes below break-even.
• Forgetting that every resale pays again. Buy back a card you've already let go, and the round trip has cost you 5% of the sale.
• Listing cards worth little more than their discard value. After the cut, and the time spent, discarding them or using them in a challenge can come out ahead.

When trading isn't enough

A 5% cut on every sale makes trading slow work at the top end of the market. If the margins won't cover the signing you're after, you can top up with FC 27 coins instead: today's rates for each platform are on the coin prices page, and the order calculator takes you straight to checkout. If you can't list cards at all yet, start with how to unlock the transfer market.