About this calculator

How we calculate

Every figure comes from one calculation engine, applied in the same order HMRC applies it. There is no rounding fudge and no averaging — the numbers you see are the arithmetic worked through step by step.

1. 1

   Take off any salary sacrifice

   Pension contributions made by salary sacrifice come off your pay first. That reduced figure is what income tax, National Insurance and student loan deductions are all worked out on.

2. 2

   Work out your personal allowance

   Start from £12,570, add the blind person's allowance if it applies, subtract £1,260 if you transfer part of your allowance to a spouse, then withdraw £1 for every £2 you earn above £100,000.

3. 3

   Apply the income tax bands

   The bands are applied to your taxable income — what is left after the allowance. England, Wales and Northern Ireland have three bands; Scotland has six. If you receive the marriage allowance, £252 is taken off the result.

4. 4

   Add National Insurance

   Class 1 employee National Insurance is 8% of earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above that. It is charged on your pay, not your taxable income, so the personal allowance does not apply.

5. 5

   Add any student loan repayment

   Repayments are a flat percentage of everything above your plan threshold — 9% for Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5, and 6% for a Postgraduate loan.

6. 6

   Subtract the lot from your gross pay

   What is left is your take-home pay, which we show annually, monthly and hourly alongside your effective and marginal tax rates.

Key 2026/27 figures

These values are read directly from the calculator's own configuration, so this table cannot drift out of step with the results you see.

Data sources

Every rate and threshold is taken from an official publication. We do not copy figures from other calculators.

• HMRC — Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027

  Income tax bands, personal allowance, employee and employer National Insurance.

• HMRC — Income Tax rates and allowances

  Blind person's allowance and the marriage allowance transfer.

• gov.scot — Scottish Income Tax: rates and bands

  The six Scottish bands: starter, basic, intermediate, higher, advanced and top.

• Student Loans Company — repayment thresholds

  Plan 1, 2, 4, 5 and Postgraduate thresholds and deduction rates.

• GOV.UK — The new State Pension

  The full new State Pension figure quoted in our guides.

What this calculator does not do

Being clear about the edges matters more than pretending there aren't any:

• It assumes a standard tax code. It does not model an emergency code, a K code, or an adjustment for underpaid tax from an earlier year.
• It assumes your pay is level across the year. Real PAYE is worked out cumulatively each pay period, so a mid-year pay rise or a bonus month will not match exactly.
• It treats pension contributions as salary sacrifice. Relief-at-source and net-pay arrangements give a different National Insurance result.
• It covers employment income only — no savings interest, dividends, rental income, benefits in kind or Self Assessment.
• It does not model student loan repayments across more than one plan at a time.

Who makes this

UK Salary Calculator is a small independent project, not a firm and not part of one. We are not accountants, we are not regulated to give financial advice, and we do not pretend otherwise — which is why every page states what it assumes and links to the official source behind each figure rather than asking you to take our word for it.

What we do claim is care with the arithmetic. Every rate and threshold is traceable to an HMRC or gov.scot publication, the calculation follows the order HMRC applies it in, and the results are checked against hand-worked examples before anything ships. Where the tool simplifies, it says so in the limitations section below rather than quietly rounding the problem away.

How we keep it accurate

Tax figures go out of date on a fixed schedule and at unpredictable Budgets, so accuracy here is a process rather than a one-off effort:

• •Every rate and threshold for a tax year lives in one place in the code, not scattered through the pages. Changing a figure changes it everywhere at once, so the calculator and the written guides cannot drift apart.
• •Each tax year is kept separately, so older years stay selectable and produce the figures that were correct at the time rather than being overwritten.
• •Changes are checked against hand-worked examples — the arithmetic written out in full and compared with what the code produces — before they go live. A change that moves an existing figure has to be justified, not just accepted.
• •Figures are reviewed at the start of each tax year and after each Budget, and the review date is shown on every calculator so you can see how fresh it is.
• •Corrections from readers are prioritised over new features. If a figure is wrong, that matters more than anything else on the roadmap.

If you find something wrong, please tell us. Include the salary and settings you used and what you expected — that is usually enough to reproduce it immediately.

How this site is funded

The calculators are free and we intend to keep them that way. The site is funded by advertising, and some outbound links to partners are affiliate links, which is set out in full in our privacy policy.

None of that touches the numbers. No advertiser or partner has any influence over a rate, a threshold or a calculation, and we do not accept payment to present a figure in a particular way. The tax figures come from official publications and nowhere else — if a result ever appeared to favour an advertiser, it would be a bug, and we would want to hear about it.

Contact

Spotted a figure that looks wrong, or a case we handle badly? Please tell us — corrections are the fastest way this tool improves. Email info@minvato.com with the salary and settings you used and what you expected to see. There is more on what to send, and what we cannot help with, on the contact page.