PercentPercent decrease
Name: Date:
Work out each new amount.
125% less than 124 =
240% less than 195 =
380% less than 165 =
460% less than 160 =
560% less than 5 =
675% less than 172 =
760% less than 85 =
850% less than 194 =
Percent decrease worksheets
Taking a percent off a number is the half of percent that shows up in every sale, discount and drop. These free printable worksheets keep to decreases — "40% less than 25" — so a child works one move to fluency.
Kid stuck on one? You don’t just get the sheet.
Percent decrease
The answer key prints on a separate page.
What's on this sheet
The questions are worded as comparisons rather than instructions: "40% less than 25" instead of "decrease 25 by 40%". That is how the idea actually arrives — a price cut, a smaller class, a shorter time — and it makes a child decide to subtract instead of following a verb. The arithmetic underneath is a percent-of followed by one subtraction; the reasoning is that the starting number is what the share comes off.
Why this sheet works
Every answer is a whole number, and that is a constraint on the pair rather than on either number alone. 40% of 25 is 10 and 40% of 26 is 10.4, so the sheet only draws numbers where the change lands whole — the same care the percent-of sheets take, so nothing here asks for a decimal a sixth-grader has not been set up to expect.
How this one works
One question from this sheet, worked through a step at a time.
25% less than 124
1%of124=1.24
1.24×25=31
124−31=93
- Find one percent first — that is one hundredth of 124, which is 1.24.
- 25% is 25 of those, so multiply: 1.24 × 25 = 31.
- "Less than" means the 31 comes OFF the 124, and the 31 was never the answer: 124 − 31 = 93.