Salary & Take-Home Pay Calculator

How to use

Enter your annual gross salary — the figure on your contract, before anything is taken off. Then tell it where you live, because Income Tax rates in Scotland are different from those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Set the pay frequency to match your payroll and the result splits across your actual pay periods as well as the year.

The three optional fields are where the real money is. Enter your pension contribution as a percentage or a cash amount, then pick the arrangement: salary sacrifice saves National Insurance as well as Income Tax, a net pay arrangement saves only Income Tax, and the calculator shows you what the difference is worth on your salary. Finally, select your student loan plan if you have one — it comes out of the same payslip and is easy to forget when you're working out what you'll actually be paid.

How UK take-home pay is calculated

Three separate deductions come off a UK payslip, and they are calculated on different amounts — which is the reason a single percentage can never answer this question:

1. Income Tax is charged on your salary minus your Personal Allowance (currently £12,570) and minus any pension contribution. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the remainder is taxed at 20% up to £37,700 of taxable income — that's £50,270 of salary — then 40%, then 45% above £125,140.
2. National Insurance is charged on your gross pay, with no allowance deducted and — under a net pay arrangement — no pension relief. It is 8% between £12,570 and £50,270, and then drops to 2%. National Insurance is not devolved, so it is identical across the whole UK.
3. Student loan repayments are a percentage of income above a plan-specific threshold — 9% for undergraduate plans, 6% for a Postgraduate Loan — and are unaffected by how much you still owe.

Because the three bases differ, the same £1,000 of pension contribution changes each deduction by a different amount, and a rise that pushes you over one threshold may not touch the others. That's what the line-by-line breakdown above is for.

Worked example: £60,000 a year

Take a £60,000 salary in England on the 2026/27 rates, with no pension and no student loan. The Personal Allowance of £12,570 comes off first, leaving £47,430 of taxable income. Of that, £37,700 is taxed at 20% and the remaining £9,730 at 40%, giving £11,432 of Income Tax.

National Insurance is worked out separately on the full £60,000: 8% on the £37,700 between the two thresholds and 2% on the £9,730 above the Upper Earnings Limit, which comes to £3,210.60. Total deductions of £14,642.60 leave take-home pay of £45,357.40 — about £3,779.78 a month, an effective rate of 24.4% despite a 40% marginal rate.

The same salary in Scotland pays £13,182 of Income Tax — £1,750 more — because Scotland's higher rate is 42% and it starts at £43,662 rather than £50,270. National Insurance is unchanged.

The 60% band between £100,000 and £125,140

This is the most valuable thing on the page for anyone approaching six figures, and it isn't in the published rate tables at all. Above £100,000 of adjusted net income, the Personal Allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 earned. So an extra £1 of salary is taxed at 40% and exposes another 50p that was previously tax-free, also taxed at 40% — a real marginal rate of 60%.

On the 2026/27 figures, moving from £100,000 to £101,000 increases Income Tax by £600 on £1,000 of extra pay. Once you pass £125,140 the allowance is gone, there is nothing left to withdraw, and the marginal rate falls back to 45%. The band is a genuine spike, not a step.

The practical consequence: a pension contribution made inside that band gets 60% relief. Put £10,000 into a pension from a £110,000 salary and your take-home falls by roughly £4,000, because the other £6,000 would have gone in tax. Nowhere else in the UK system is saving that cheap — and you can test it in seconds by changing the pension field above and watching the take-home figure move by less than the contribution.

Salary sacrifice: the same pension, more take-home

Most workplace pensions run as a net pay or relief-at-source arrangement: the contribution comes out of pay that has already been assessed for National Insurance. You get Income Tax relief but no NI relief.

Under salary sacrifice you formally give up part of your salary and your employer pays the equivalent into your pension. Your contractual pay is genuinely lower, so there is less for NI to be charged on. The pension receives the same amount, HMRC gets the same Income Tax, and the National Insurance simply isn't due — for a basic-rate earner that's 8% of the contribution back in your pocket. Many employers also pass on some of their own 15% saving as an extra contribution.

Two things to know before asking for it. Sacrifice reduces your gross pay for other purposes too, which can affect mortgage affordability assessments, statutory maternity pay and life cover based on a multiple of salary — good employers define those on pre-sacrifice salary, but you should check. And it cannot take your pay below the National Minimum Wage.

Marginal vs. effective rate

Your marginal rate is what the next pound is taxed at; your effective rate is total deductions divided by gross pay. They are far apart in the UK because the bands are progressive: our £60,000 example has a 40% marginal Income Tax rate but an effective total deduction rate of 24.4%. When people say “I'm a 40% taxpayer” they mean the marginal figure, and it is never what they actually hand over.

The number worth knowing is the combined marginal rate, which the calculator shows: 20% tax plus 8% NI is 28% for a basic-rate earner, 40% plus 2% is 42% for a higher-rate one, and 60% plus 2% is 62% inside the allowance taper. Add 9% if you have a student loan.

What to do with what's left

Net pay is the figure every other financial decision is made against — lenders and planners both work backwards from it, not from your gross salary:

• Housing. Lenders typically cap borrowing at 4 to 4.5 times gross income, but affordability is really about the monthly payment against your monthly net. Take the per-month figure above, decide what share you're willing to commit, then check what loan that monthly payment supports — remembering it covers capital and interest only, before insurance and Council Tax.
• Buying costs. If you're moving, the tax on the purchase is a separate lump sum you'll need in cash on completion day. Work out the stamp duty on the price — it differs by nation and by whether you're a first-time buyer.
• Investing the surplus. Whatever survives housing and living costs is what compounds. A modest monthly amount changes shape over twenty years, and it is worth seeing the arithmetic rather than trusting intuition: project a monthly contribution forward at a realistic return. In the UK, doing that inside an ISA keeps the growth free of tax entirely.
• Pension first, usually. Before either of the above, note that pension relief is the only place you get 20p, 40p or even 60p back on every pound you put aside. Change the pension field above and watch how little your take-home actually falls.

Tips and common mistakes

• A pay rise never lowers your take-home. Only the income above each threshold is taxed at the higher rate. Even in the 60% band you keep 40p of every extra pound — less than you'd like, but more than nothing.
• Check your tax code, not just your salary. The calculator assumes the standard code. If yours isn't 1257L (or S1257L in Scotland), something is adjusting your allowance — unpaid tax from a previous year, a company car, or a second job — and your real take-home will differ.
• National Insurance ignores your pension unless you sacrifice. The single most common misunderstanding, and the reason two people with identical salaries and identical pension contributions can take home different amounts.
• A bonus is taxed at your marginal rate, not a special one. It oftenlooks punitive because a single large payment can push that month's cumulative calculation into a higher band, but PAYE corrects itself over the year. If a bonus would push you past £100,000, sacrificing part of it into your pension avoids the 60% band entirely.
• Two jobs, one allowance. Your Personal Allowance is normally applied to your main job only, so a second job is often taxed at 20% from the first pound. Enter your combined salary here for the true annual picture.