Take Home Pay Calculator UK

What this take home pay calculator does

Somebody offers you a salary. It is a big round number and it sounds excellent. Then the first payslip arrives and the number in your account is a good deal smaller, and you find yourself doing arithmetic you should probably have done a month earlier.

This works it out in advance. Tell it where in the UK you live and what you earn, and it returns your income tax, your National Insurance, and what is left, annually and monthly.

It handles three income types at once: employment, self employment profit, and rental profit. That is unusual and genuinely useful, because plenty of people have two of the three and every income stream pushes the others further up the bands. It also splits England, Wales and Northern Ireland from Scotland, which has run its own income tax rates since 2017 and is now noticeably different.

All of it runs in your browser using the 2026/27 rates. Nothing typed here is stored or sent anywhere.

How to use it

1. Location. England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Wales and Northern Ireland currently use the same rates as England, so only picking Scotland changes anything. What matters is where you live, not where your employer is.
2. Employment Income. Your gross annual salary before any deductions.
3. Self-Employment Net Income. Profit after allowable expenses, not turnover. Leave blank if it does not apply.
4. Rental Net Income. Rental profit after allowable expenses. Leave blank if it does not apply.

Press Calculate. Press Reset to clear it.

One thing about how the three incomes interact. Income tax is worked out on the total, because the bands apply to all of it together. National Insurance is worked out separately on each: employment income pays Class 1, self employment profit pays Class 4, and rental income pays no National Insurance at all. That is why adding rental income raises your tax bill but not your NI.

The 2026/27 rates it uses

The tax year runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland:

The personal allowance shrinks by £1 for every £2 you earn above £100,000, so it is gone entirely at £125,140. That has consequences worth a section of its own.

National Insurance is not devolved, so these apply everywhere in the UK:

Two things worth noticing there. National Insurance goes down above £50,270, from 8 percent to 2, which is the opposite of income tax and the reason it is often described as regressive. And self employed people pay 6 percent where employees pay 8, which is worth £754 a year to anyone earning above the upper limit. Class 2 stopped being compulsory in April 2024, so the tool treats it as nil.

These thresholds have been frozen since 2021 and are set to stay frozen to April 2031. As wages rise, more people drift into higher bands without any rate ever changing, which is the mechanism usually called fiscal drag.

A worked example: £60,000 in England

Employment income of £60,000, living in England.

Income tax. The first £12,570 is free. The next £37,700 is taxed at 20 percent, which is £7,540. That takes you to £50,270. The remaining £9,730 is taxed at 40 percent, which is £3,892. Total tax: £11,432.

National Insurance. Nothing on the first £12,570. Then 8 percent on the £37,700 up to £50,270, which is £3,016. Then 2 percent on the £9,730 above, which is £194.60. Total NI: £3,210.60.

Take home. £60,000 minus £11,432 minus £3,210.60 = £45,357.40 a year, or £3,779.78 a month.

So on a £60,000 salary you keep about 75.6 percent of it. Which is a more useful number to carry around than the headline, particularly when comparing two offers.

Take home pay at common salaries

England, Wales and Northern Ireland, employment income only, 2026/27 rates:

Read down the take home column and the shape is clear. Going from £20,000 to £40,000 doubles your gross and adds about £14,400 to your pocket. Going from £80,000 to £100,000 adds £20,000 gross and about £11,600 net. The higher you climb, the less of each additional pound survives the trip.

The band where you keep 38 pence in the pound

There is a stretch of the UK tax system where the marginal rate is higher than anywhere else, including for millionaires, and almost nobody in it realises.

It runs from £100,000 to £125,140, and it exists because of the personal allowance taper. Every £2 you earn above £100,000 removes £1 of your tax free allowance. That £1 then gets taxed at 40 percent. So on each extra £2 you pay 80p of ordinary higher rate tax plus 40p on the allowance you just lost, which is £1.20 out of £2, or 60 percent. Add the 2 percent National Insurance and the real marginal rate is 62 percent.

Look at the last row. Once you are past £125,140 the allowance is already gone, there is nothing left to take away, and the marginal rate falls back to 47 percent. The most expensive pounds you will ever earn are the ones between £100,000 and £125,140.

Put in whole numbers: a rise from £100,000 to £125,140 is £25,140 of extra gross pay. Your take home goes from £68,557 to £78,111, a rise of £9,553. You keep 38 percent of it.

Which is why anyone with earnings in that band tends to look hard at pension contributions or salary sacrifice. Money diverted before it becomes taxable income does not just avoid 40 percent, it restores the personal allowance it would have destroyed. Whether that is right for you depends on your circumstances, and it is worth proper advice, but the arithmetic is at least worth knowing about.

Scotland is genuinely different

Since 2017 the Scottish Parliament has set its own rates and bands on earned income. It now runs six bands where the rest of the UK runs three, and for 2026/27 the starter and basic thresholds moved up well above inflation.

What that does to the same salary:

Below about £30,000 a Scottish taxpayer pays slightly less, thanks to the 19 percent starter rate. Above that the gap opens quickly, and the reason is the threshold rather than the rate: Scotland's higher rate starts at £43,663 while the rest of the UK waits until £50,270. That £6,600 stretch is taxed at 42 percent in Scotland and 20 percent in England, which is where most of the divergence comes from.

One consequence worth flagging. In that £43,663 to £50,270 window a Scottish employee pays 42 percent income tax and is still in the 8 percent National Insurance band, for a combined marginal rate of 50 percent. National Insurance is reserved to Westminster, so it does not adjust to match.

HMRC decides whether you are a Scottish taxpayer based on where your main home is for most of the tax year, not where you work. If your tax code starts with S, you are one.

Why your payslip will not match this

Run this, then look at an actual payslip, and the two will differ. Here is what sits in between, roughly in order of size.

Pension contributions

The biggest one, and the tool does not model it. Almost every employee is auto enrolled into a workplace pension, and those contributions come out before you see the money. How they are treated for tax depends on the scheme: salary sacrifice reduces your gross pay for both tax and National Insurance, net pay arrangements reduce taxable pay but not NI, and relief at source takes it from your net pay and reclaims basic rate tax afterward. Three mechanisms, three different payslips, same pension.

Student loan repayments

Deducted through payroll and not modelled here. The threshold and percentage depend on which plan you are on, and postgraduate loans are deducted on top of an undergraduate plan rather than instead of it. For many graduates this is the single largest missing deduction.

Your tax code

This tool assumes the standard personal allowance. Your actual code may differ because of a company car, medical insurance, underpaid tax being collected from a previous year, the marriage allowance, or a second job. A code that is not 1257L means your allowance is not £12,570.

Monthly rather than annual

PAYE works cumulatively across the year rather than dividing the annual figure by twelve. So a bonus month, a pay rise mid year, or starting a job partway through the year all produce months that do not match a twelfth of the annual number, even though the year end total will.

Everything else

Salary sacrifice for a car or cycle scheme, childcare vouchers, share schemes, union subscriptions, and taxable benefits in kind all move the figure. None of them are in here.

So treat this as a clean estimate of tax and National Insurance on the income you entered. It will be accurate on those two things and silent on everything else.

Questions people ask

What is £60,000 after tax in the UK?

About £45,357 a year, or £3,780 a month, in England, Wales or Northern Ireland for 2026/27. That is after £11,432 income tax and £3,211 National Insurance, before pension or student loan.

Do I pay more tax in Scotland?

Below roughly £30,000 you pay slightly less. Above that you pay more, and the gap widens with income. At £50,000 it is about £1,496 a year, at £100,000 about £3,300.

Why is my pay rise near £100,000 worth so little?

Because the personal allowance tapers away between £100,000 and £125,140, producing a marginal rate of 62 percent including National Insurance. You keep 38 pence of each extra pound in that band. See the section above.

Does this include my pension or student loan?

No. Both come out of your pay and neither is modelled here, so your actual net pay will be lower than the figure shown.

How is rental income treated?

It is added to your other income for income tax, so it can push you into a higher band. It does not attract National Insurance, which is why adding it raises your tax but not your NI.

Why do self employed people pay less National Insurance?

Class 4 is charged at 6 percent where employee Class 1 is 8 percent, on the same thresholds. Above £50,270 that is a saving of £754 a year. Employees do get more in return, including statutory sick and redundancy rights.

Are Welsh rates different?

Wales has the power to vary its rates but has not so far, so Welsh taxpayers currently pay the same as England and Northern Ireland.

Is the monthly figure what I will actually receive?

It is the annual figure divided by twelve. PAYE operates cumulatively, so individual months can differ, particularly if you get a bonus, change job, or receive a rise partway through the year.

References

A note on sourcing and on dates. The rates used are those for the 2026/27 tax year, which runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. Income tax bands for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, together with the personal allowance and its taper above £100,000, are published by HMRC on GOV.UK. Scottish bands are set by the Scottish Parliament and are taken from the Scottish Government's own technical factsheet for 2026 to 2027. National Insurance is reserved and its rates and thresholds come from HMRC. Because rates change annually, and because Scottish bands are reset each Scottish Budget, anyone relying on a figure here after April 2027 should check the current published rates.

1. HM Revenue and Customs, Income Tax Rates and Personal Allowances, GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates
2. HM Revenue and Customs, National Insurance Rates and Categories, GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-rates-letters
3. Scottish Government, Scottish Income Tax 2026 to 2027: Technical Factsheet. https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-income-tax-technical-factsheet/
4. Deloitte Taxscape, Autumn Budget 2025: Key Income Tax and National Insurance Thresholds to Remain Frozen. https://taxscape.deloitte.com/measures-autumn-budget-2025/key-income-tax-and-national-insurance-thresholds-to-remain-frozen.aspx