The UK tax calculator: enter your salary and see your take-home pay after income tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan — for any tax year from 2023/24 to 2026/27, with every band shown. Results update as you type.
Does this apply to you? Tick it only if you took out a Postgraduate Loan for a Master's or PhD course in England or Wales. It repays at 6% above £21,000, on top of any undergraduate plan above. If your only loan is from an undergraduate degree — or you have no Master's/PhD loan — leave it unticked. Not sure which plan you're on? It's shown on your payslip and in your Student Loans Company account.
Standard codes ending in L are supported (the number × 10 is your tax-free allowance). Other codes, benefits and second jobs are not covered — see the notes below.
Standard tax code, England, Wales & Northern Ireland, no pension or student loan. Scottish take-home is shown for comparison — National Insurance is identical across the UK.
| Gross salary | Income tax | Nat. Insurance | Take-home / year | Take-home / month | Scotland / year |
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Worked out the way HMRC's own estimator does it — including the PAYE tax-table quirk that tax code 1257L gives £12,579 of tax-free pay, not £12,570, which is why calculators using the flat allowance show £1.80 more tax. Full 2026/27 rates in our tax bands guide.
Your employer starts with your gross pay, then takes off four things before the money reaches your bank: income tax, National Insurance, your pension contribution and any student loan repayment. What's left is your take-home (net) pay.
Income tax is charged in slices, never on everything at once. In 2026/27 the first £12,570 you earn is tax-free (your Personal Allowance). The next slice, up to £50,270, is taxed at 20%; income from £50,271 to £125,140 at 40%; and anything above £125,140 at 45%. Crossing into a higher band only taxes the part above the line — a pay rise can never make you worse off on its own. Scotland sets its own bands, with six rates from 19% to 48%.
National Insurance (employee, category A) is 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above that. It is the same in every part of the UK, and your employer pays a separate 15% on top — that never comes out of your pay.
Pension contributions reduce your take-home differently depending on the scheme. Salary sacrifice takes the pension before tax and National Insurance, so you keep the most. A standard (net pay) pension is taken before income tax but after National Insurance. A pension paid from net pay gets a 20% top-up from the government into the pot instead.
Student loans take 9% of everything you earn above your plan's threshold (Plan 2: £29,385 in 2026/27), and 6% for Postgraduate loans above £21,000. It behaves like an extra tax band, which is why graduates often keep less of a pay rise than they expect.
One job, paid evenly across the year, standard Personal Allowance unless you enter a tax code. It doesn't cover benefits-in-kind, company cars, second jobs, self-employment, the Marriage Allowance, Blind Person's Allowance, or income from savings, dividends or property. Payroll is calculated per pay period, so a real payslip can differ by a few pounds.
Payroll works per pay period (monthly or weekly), while this calculator spreads your salary evenly across the year. Bonuses, overtime, unpaid leave and mid-year tax code changes can all move a single payslip by a few pounds either way.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2026/27: £6,484.20 income tax and £2,594.40 National Insurance, leaving £35,921.40 a year (£2,993.45 a month) before pension or student loan deductions — the same figures HMRC's own estimator gives for tax code 1257L.
Above £100,000 you lose £1 of Personal Allowance for every £2 earned, until it's gone at £125,140. Combined with 40% tax and 2% National Insurance, that's an effective marginal rate of about 62% between £100,000 and £125,140. Read the guide →
Scotland has six bands from 19% to 48%. Lower earners pay slightly less than the rest of the UK; above roughly £29,500, more. On £45,000, Scottish income tax is £6,878.27 versus £6,484.20 elsewhere. National Insurance is identical.
Yes — pick 2025/26, 2024/25 or 2023/24 under Tax year and the calculator uses that year's rates throughout: Scotland's older bands, that year's student loan thresholds, and even the National Insurance cut part-way through 2023/24 (12% until January 2024, then 10%).
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, stored or included in analytics.