Question

Jerome bought a sweater that was on sale for 20 percent off. Jerome paid $25.10 for the sweater, including sales tax of 8.25 percent. Write an equation that can be used to find the original price of the sweater.

Answer 1

The $25.10 is 108% of the sale price.

$25.10 = 1.08n  divide both sides by 1.08 = $23.24
To find the original price we must say that the sale price is 80% of the original price.
So we can write $23.24 = 80% of n or $23.24 = .8n   Dividing both side by .8 we get $29.05.  
So how can we do both of these in one equation?  Here is one way.
($25.10/ 1.08) = .8n   (I wrote it as two equation above since it explains it better)
There are other equations that will work too.