Salary calculator

Take-home pay is gross pay less the deductions payroll makes before paying you. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year those are Income Tax, charged at 20%, 40% and 45% on pay above the Personal Allowance of £12,570; Class 1 National Insurance at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above (HMRC, 2026 to 2027); any student loan repayment; and your workplace pension contribution. On £35,000 a year with no pension or loan, that leaves £28,719.60, or £2,393.30 a month. Scottish taxpayers use six bands of their own instead of the three above. Above £100,000 the allowance tapers away, and a pension paid by salary sacrifice also lowers National Insurance. Take-home pay is also the figure lenders start from when they judge what a loan would cost you each month.

Your employer deducts tax and contributions before paying you, through the Pay As You Earn system. On a gross salary of £35,000 in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, £4,486.00 goes in Income Tax and £1,794.40 in National Insurance over the year, leaving take-home pay of £28,719.60, or £2,393.30 a month.

Put another way, 17.9% of that gross never arrives in your account. The share rises with income, because both deductions are progressive: nothing is taken on the first £12,570, and higher slices of pay are taxed at higher rates.

Most employees have a tax code of 1257L, which tells payroll to leave the Personal Allowance of £12,570 (HMRC, 2026 to 2027) untaxed. Pay above it is taxed in bands, each rate applying only to the slice of income inside that band.

The allowance and the basic rate limit are frozen until 5 April 2031. As wages rise while thresholds stand still, more of each pay rise lands in a higher band, a slow tax increase known as fiscal drag.

Once adjusted net income passes £100,000, the Personal Allowance shrinks by one pound for every £2 earned above that line, disappearing entirely at £125,140. Across that stretch each extra pound is taxed at the higher rate and also pulls more of the allowance into tax, an effective marginal rate of 60% before National Insurance.

At £110,000, for example, the allowance has shrunk to £7,570, and Income Tax for the year comes to £33,432.00. Pension contributions reduce adjusted net income, which is why they are the usual way people in this range restore part of the allowance.

Employees pay Class 1 contributions of 8% on earnings between the primary threshold of £12,570 and the upper earnings limit of £50,270, and 2% on everything above. Unlike Income Tax, it is worked out on each pay period in isolation, so an irregular bonus month can cost more than the same money spread evenly.

Contributions build entitlement to the State Pension and some benefits. They stop once you reach State Pension age, even if you keep working, while Income Tax carries on.

If your main home is in Scotland, HMRC applies the Scottish Parliament's own bands to wages, shown by an S at the start of your tax code. The allowance and National Insurance are the same across the UK; only the Income Tax bands differ.

With a starter rate below the UK basic rate, lower earners pay slightly less in Scotland; from the intermediate rate upwards they pay more. On £35,000 the difference is small: £4,501.07 in Scotland against £4,486.00 elsewhere.

Repayments are collected alongside tax and depend on your plan, not on how much you still owe (Department for Education, 2026 to 2027). Each plan takes a fixed share of income above its own threshold, and a Postgraduate Loan is repaid on top of any undergraduate plan.

A Plan 2 graduate on £35,000 repays £505.35 a year, which brings monthly take-home pay down to £2,351.19.

Most employees are in a workplace pension through auto-enrolment, and how the contribution is taken changes the payslip. Under relief at source it comes out of pay after tax at 80% of its value, the scheme claiming the basic rate relief on top. Under a net pay arrangement it is taken before Income Tax but not before National Insurance. Under salary sacrifice your pay itself is lowered, which saves both.

With 5% of £35,000 going into the pension, relief at source takes £1,400.00 from pay and leaves £27,319.60 for the year; a net pay arrangement leaves the same £27,319.60, since a basic rate taxpayer gets the same relief either way. Salary sacrifice leaves £27,459.60, because National Insurance falls to £1,654.40 from £1,794.40.

Higher and additional rate taxpayers under relief at source claim the rest of their relief through Self Assessment or a tax code, so it never shows on the payslip. From 6 April 2029, pension contributions sacrificed above £2,000 a year will pay National Insurance, though the Income Tax saving stays.

Left at the standard 1257L, the calculator models the year as HMRC would settle it, taper included. Type another code and it is applied the way payroll applies it: the number times ten plus nine is the tax-free amount, so 1100L is worth £11,009 and brings Income Tax on £35,000 to £4,798.20. BR, D0 and D1 tax all pay at one rate, S at the front marks a Scottish code (SBR and SD0 to SD3), 0T gives no allowance and NT no tax. K codes, which add to taxable pay, are not supported.

Weekly pay is multiplied by 52, and an hourly rate by the paid hours in a week and then by 52, which is how HMRC's own tables turn yearly figures into weekly ones. At £15.00 an hour for 37.5 hours a week, take-home pay comes to £24,579.60 a year, or £472.68 a week.

The table runs the standard case through six gross salaries, from a modest wage to one well inside the additional rate band.

Read down the last column and the progressive design shows: the deducted share climbs with each step, but a raise never leaves you worse off, because higher rates only touch the pounds inside the higher band.

Some parts of real pay fall outside the estimate, and each of them can move a payslip away from the figure above.

• Benefits in kind such as a company car or private medical cover. HMRC collects the tax on them by lowering your tax code, so entering that code shows most of the effect.
• K codes, issued when benefits outweigh the allowance. They add to taxable pay and are limited to half of each payment, which this estimate does not apply.
• Irregular pay. National Insurance is worked out on each pay period on its own, so a bonus month can cost more than the same money spread over the year.
• Extra pension relief for higher and additional rate taxpayers under relief at source, which is claimed outside payroll.
• An emergency tax code, often issued after a job change, which can overtax the first payslips until HMRC corrects it.

Your payslip and, after the year ends, your P60 show what was actually deducted. If they differ widely from the estimate here, the tax code is the first thing to check. When budgeting for borrowing, the loan calculator shows what monthly repayment a given take-home pay would have to carry.