UK Salary After Tax Calculator 2026/27

On £40,000 gross in 2026/27 (England, Wales, NI), your take-home is roughly £32,328 a year — about £2,694 a month, or £622 a week. Income tax comes out to £5,486 (20% on the £27,430 above your £12,570 personal allowance) and Class 1 NI is around £2,186. £40k is squarely in the basic-rate band, so a 1% pension contribution costs you about £20 a month after tax — small change for what compounds into real money by retirement.

£50,000 gross gives you around £39,178 a year take-home, or roughly £3,265 a month. Income tax is £7,486 and NI is around £3,026. You're sitting just inside the basic rate band — earn another £270 and you tip into 40% territory. This is the salary band where pension salary sacrifice starts to look very attractive because you avoid both income tax and NI on the sacrificed amount.

£60,000 gives you about £45,342 a year take-home, or roughly £3,778 a month. Income tax jumps to £11,432 because £9,730 of your salary now falls in the 40% higher-rate band, and NI is around £3,226. The jump from £50k to £60k looks worse than it is because every extra pound carries a 42% deduction (40% income tax + 2% NI) — pension salary sacrifice gets even more efficient here for the same reason.

On £70,000 gross your take-home is around £51,142 a year, or about £4,262 a month. Income tax is £15,432 and NI sits at roughly £3,426. You're well into the 40% band now — only the first £37,700 of taxable income gets the basic rate, the rest is taxed at higher rate. A 10% pension contribution here costs you about £406 a month in net pay but adds £583 to your pension pot, which is the kind of arithmetic that makes higher-rate-band sacrifice almost always worth it.

On £100,000 you take home around £67,803, or about £5,650 a month. The headline tax is £27,432 and NI is around £4,765. £100k is also where the personal-allowance taper starts: every £2 you earn over £100k removes £1 of your personal allowance, which is why the effective marginal rate between £100k and £125,140 is a brutal 60%. Pension sacrifice or charitable Gift Aid to drop below £100k is a common move at this band.

PAYE (Pay As You Earn) is the system HMRC uses to deduct income tax and National Insurance from your salary before you see it. A PAYE calculator works backwards from your gross salary to estimate what your employer will deduct — exactly what this tool does for the 2026/27 tax year. The maths uses the personal allowance (£12,570), the basic-rate band (to £50,270), the higher-rate band (to £125,140) and the additional-rate band above. Class 1 NI runs on its own thresholds (8% from £12,570 to £50,270, 2% above). The output should match your real payslip to within a pound or two, assuming a standard tax code like 1257L or S1257L.

Not in this tool directly — this is a gross-to-net calculator. But it's easy to use it in reverse: type a guess like £40,000 into the gross box, look at the monthly take-home, and adjust up or down until you hit your target. As a rough rule, in the basic-rate band each extra £1,000 of gross adds about £680 to net annual pay; in the higher-rate band each £1,000 adds about £580; in the 60% taper zone (£100k to £125,140) each £1,000 adds only about £400. So if you want £45,000 net, you're looking at roughly £62,000 gross in England/Wales/NI.

Yes. The personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021 and the freeze runs to at least April 2028 under current legislation. The basic rate threshold (£50,270) is frozen on the same timeline. This is what's known as fiscal drag — wage inflation drags more people into higher tax bands without the bands themselves moving. Worth knowing because it changes how your real take-home pay tracks against inflation.

Scotland sets its own income tax bands for non-savings, non-dividend income (employment, self-employment, pension, rental). There are six bands instead of three — starter 19%, basic 20%, intermediate 21%, higher 42%, advanced 45%, and top 48%. A Scottish taxpayer on £50,000 typically pays a few hundred pounds more in income tax than someone on the same salary in England. NI is unchanged because it's reserved to Westminster. If your tax code starts with "S" (e.g. S1257L), HMRC has you down as Scottish.

Salary sacrifice exchanges part of your gross pay for an employer pension contribution. You don't pay income tax or National Insurance on the sacrificed amount, which is the big advantage over personal contributions where you only get the income tax relief back. A £5,000 sacrifice on a £40,000 salary roughly costs you £3,400 of take-home pay but puts £5,000 into your pension, plus your employer may pass on their NI saving too. Worth checking your scheme runs salary sacrifice, not net pay or relief at source — the maths is different.

It depends which plan you're on. Plan 1 (pre-2012 starters, English/Welsh) repays 9% above £24,990 in 2026/27. Plan 2 (post-2012 English/Welsh undergrads) repays 9% above £28,470. Plan 4 (Scottish) repays 9% above £31,395. Plan 5 (new English students from 2023) repays 9% above £25,000 and runs for up to 40 years. Postgraduate loans repay 6% above £21,000 on top of any undergrad plan. The calculator handles all of these — set the right plan in the dropdown.

Because PAYE is annual-cumulative — HMRC tracks your tax against your full year's personal allowance, not month by month. If you had any underused allowance earlier (a gap between jobs, lower pay months, or starting work mid-year), it gets caught up in the final months of the tax year. The opposite happens too: a bonus in October can mean a steeper-looking February if you've crept into a higher band cumulatively. The annualised figures in our calculator are the honest picture.

Marriage Allowance lets a non-taxpayer (income under £12,570) transfer up to 10% of their personal allowance to a basic-rate-paying spouse or civil partner. In 2026/27 that's worth up to £252 a year off the higher earner's tax bill. You can backdate it four years if you've been eligible. It doesn't work if either of you is a higher-rate taxpayer. Claim through your Personal Tax Account on GOV.UK — takes about five minutes.

Not directly — this tool is built for employees and PAYE income. Director-shareholders typically take a low salary (often £12,570 to use the personal allowance) plus dividends, where dividend tax rates apply (8.75% / 33.75% / 39.35%) and the dividend allowance is £500. If that's you, the salary side of this calculator still works for the PAYE portion, but you'll need separate dividend-tax maths on top.