Take Home Pay: UK Salary After Tax

What is take home pay?

Take home pay is the money that actually lands in your bank account after your employer deducts income tax, National Insurance and anything else you owe, such as pension contributions or student loan repayments. It is worked out from your gross salary for 2026/27 using the Personal Allowance, tax bands and National Insurance rates.

Your gross pay is the full salary your contract promises — the figure in the job advert and the headline number on your payslip. Your take home pay, sometimes called net pay, is what is left once payroll has taken everything off. The gap between the two grows as your salary rises, because higher earnings are taxed at higher rates and lose allowances along the way.

UK Payroll Calculators is a free UK hub of payroll calculators and plain-English guides for employees and small employers. If you want your own number straight away, use the take home pay calculator: type in your salary and it shows the income tax, National Insurance and net pay side by side. The rest of this guide explains exactly how that number is built, so you can check it, plan around it, and spot it quickly if your payslip ever looks wrong.

This guide uses the 2026/27 rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland sets its own income tax bands, so if you pay Scottish Income Tax your figures will differ — covered in its own section below.

How is take home pay calculated in the UK?

Your employer works out your take home pay through PAYE (Pay As You Earn). The deductions come off in a set order, and once you know the order you can repeat the whole calculation yourself with a calculator. Here is the method, step by step:

• Step 1 — Start with your gross pay for the period: your annual salary, or your monthly, weekly or daily pay if that is how you are paid.
• Step 2 — Take off any pension contribution that your scheme deducts before tax — where it does, the contribution comes off here and reduces the pay that gets taxed.
• Step 3 — Subtract your Personal Allowance from what is left. The standard Personal Allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570, so most people pay no income tax on the first £12,570 they earn. What remains is your taxable income.
• Step 4 — Apply the income tax bands to your taxable income: 20% on the first slice, 40% on the next, and 45% on anything above the top threshold. The exact bands are in the next section.
• Step 5 — Work out National Insurance separately. It is not charged on your taxable income — it is charged on your gross earnings, using its own thresholds and rates, which is why the two deductions are never a single neat percentage.
• Step 6 — Take off student loan repayments if you have a loan and your earnings are above your plan's repayment threshold. This is a separate deduction again, with its own rules.
• Step 7 — Whatever is left after steps 2 to 6 is your take home pay.

Here is the same method worked through by hand on a £30,000 salary, ignoring pensions and student loans to keep it clean. Your taxable income is £30,000 minus the £12,570 Personal Allowance, which is £17,430. Income tax at 20% on £17,430 comes to £3,486.00. National Insurance is 8% of your earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and that slice is also £17,430 here, so the National Insurance bill is £1,394.40. Total deductions are £4,880.40, and your take home pay is £25,119.60 a year.

You can check any real calculation against your payslip, because a payslip shows the same journey in miniature: gross pay at the top, then each deduction listed separately — PAYE income tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and student loan repayments where they apply — and the net pay figure at the bottom, which is your take home pay for that period. Most payslips also show year-to-date totals and the tax code your employer used. If a payslip number ever surprises you, those lines are where the explanation will be. You can also create a sample payslip with our free payslip generator to see every deduction line before payday.

What are the 2026/27 income tax bands?

Income tax is charged in slices, not at one flat rate on your whole salary. According to GOV.UK's "Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027", the Personal Allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570, and it is reduced by £1 for every £2 you earn above £100,000. Once your income reaches £125,140, the allowance is gone completely.

For a standard employee in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, the bands for 2026/27 work like this:

• The first £12,570 you earn is covered by your Personal Allowance and taxed at 0%.
• The next £37,700 of taxable income is taxed at the basic rate of 20%. For someone with the full Personal Allowance, this band runs from a salary of £12,570 up to £50,270.
• Taxable income above that is taxed at the higher rate of 40%, up to total income of £125,140.
• Anything above £125,140 is taxed at the additional rate of 45%.

The slice structure matters. Earning £51,000 does not mean your whole salary is taxed at 40% — only the £730 above the £50,270 threshold is. The rest is still taxed at 20% or 0%, which is why your total tax bill, as a share of salary, is always lower than the headline rate of your highest band. Even at £100,000, you keep more than two-thirds of your gross pay before pensions and loans.

Scotland is the exception you need to know about. If you are a Scottish taxpayer — HMRC decides this mainly from where you live, and your tax code starts with the letter S — the Scottish Parliament sets your income tax bands and rates, and it uses more bands at different rates from the rest of the UK. Your Personal Allowance and your National Insurance work exactly the same as everywhere else, because those are UK-wide, but your income tax slice will not match the examples in this guide. Read the figures in this guide as the England, Wales and Northern Ireland version if your payslip shows an S code.

How much National Insurance do you pay?

National Insurance is the second big deduction, and it works differently from income tax in two ways that catch people out. First, it is worked out on your gross earnings for each pay period — each month or week stands on its own. Second, the rate falls once you pass the top threshold, rather than rising like income tax does.

GOV.UK's "Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027" gives the employee National Insurance rates for 2026/27 as follows:

• You pay 0% on earnings up to £12,570 a year.
• You pay 8% on earnings from £12,570 to £50,270.
• You pay 2% on earnings above £50,270.

On a £40,000 salary, the sums look like this. The slice between £12,570 and £40,000 is £27,430, and 8% of that is £2,194.40 a year. Nothing is charged at 2%, because you have not crossed £50,270. On a £60,000 salary, you pay 8% on the full slice up to £50,270, which is £3,016.00, plus 2% on the £9,730 above it, which is £194.60 — a National Insurance bill of £3,210.60 in total.

The pay-period rule explains a common payslip puzzle. Income tax under PAYE is cumulative: payroll looks at your earnings for the year so far, so tax overpaid in a big month tends to balance out later. National Insurance is not cumulative. A bonus month is charged National Insurance on the higher figure, with no automatic balancing later — so the same annual salary can produce slightly different National Insurance totals depending on how evenly the pay is spread.

Your employer pays National Insurance on your earnings too, on top of your salary — that cost never comes out of your pay. If you run a small business and want that side of the picture, the employer National Insurance calculator shows what employing someone costs beyond their gross salary.

How much take home pay do you get on common salaries?

Every figure below is for 2026/27, uses the standard Personal Allowance and tax bands for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and assumes no pension contributions, no student loan repayments and pay spread evenly across the year. Your own figure will be lower if pension or loan deductions apply — the sections after this one explain by how much, roughly.

• On a £20,000 salary: income tax £1,486.00, National Insurance £594.40, take home pay £17,919.60 a year (£1,493.30 a month) — you keep 89.6%.
• On a £25,000 salary: income tax £2,486.00, National Insurance £994.40, take home pay £21,519.60 a year (£1,793.30 a month) — you keep 86.1%.
• On a £30,000 salary: income tax £3,486.00, National Insurance £1,394.40, take home pay £25,119.60 a year (£2,093.30 a month) — you keep 83.7%.
• On a £35,000 salary: income tax £4,486.00, National Insurance £1,794.40, take home pay £28,719.60 a year (£2,393.30 a month) — you keep 82.1%.
• On a £40,000 salary: income tax £5,486.00, National Insurance £2,194.40, take home pay £32,319.60 a year (£2,693.30 a month) — you keep 80.8%.
• On a £45,000 salary: income tax £6,486.00, National Insurance £2,594.40, take home pay £35,919.60 a year (£2,993.30 a month) — you keep 79.8%.
• On a £50,000 salary: income tax £7,486.00, National Insurance £2,994.40, take home pay £39,519.60 a year (£3,293.30 a month) — you keep 79.0%.
• On a £60,000 salary: income tax £11,432.00, National Insurance £3,210.60, take home pay £45,357.40 a year (£3,779.78 a month) — you keep 75.6%.
• On a £75,000 salary: income tax £17,432.00, National Insurance £3,510.60, take home pay £54,057.40 a year (£4,504.78 a month) — you keep 72.1%.
• On a £100,000 salary: income tax £27,432.00, National Insurance £4,010.60, take home pay £68,557.40 a year (£5,713.12 a month) — you keep 68.6%.
• On a £110,000 salary: income tax £33,432.00, National Insurance £4,210.60, take home pay £72,357.40 a year (£6,029.78 a month) — you keep 65.8%. Your Personal Allowance is reduced to £7,570 at this level.
• On a salary of £125,140: income tax £42,516.00, National Insurance £4,513.40, take home pay £78,110.60 a year (£6,509.22 a month) — you keep 62.4%. Your Personal Allowance is zero at this level.

Two patterns are worth noticing. First, the share you keep falls steadily as pay rises — from nearly 90% at £20,000 to just under 80% at £50,000 — because more of your income lands in the 20% tax slice and the 8% National Insurance slice. Second, the drop speeds up after £50,270, where the 40% tax band starts, and again after £100,000, where the Personal Allowance taper bites. That is why a pay rise crossing one of those lines can feel smaller than expected when it reaches your bank account.

If you work part-time, started part-way through the year, or are comparing a contract rate with a salary, work out your gross pay for the year first — the pro rata salary calculator does that part — then run the annual figure through the same method as above.

Why does the Personal Allowance shrink over £100,000?

Once your income passes £100,000, the Personal Allowance is withdrawn gradually: you lose £1 of allowance for every £2 of income above £100,000. Earn £110,000 and your allowance has fallen by £5,000, from £12,570 to £7,570. Earn £125,140 and there is nothing left — every pound you earn is taxable, and the slice above £125,140 is taxed at 45%.

The taper creates the harshest marginal rate in the whole system. Inside the £100,000 to £125,140 band, each extra £1 of pay is taxed at 40p in the usual way — and the 50p of Personal Allowance that £1 takes away becomes taxable too, adding another 20p. So in that band you lose about 60p of every extra £1 to income tax, before National Insurance. It is a legal quirk rather than a published tax band, but it is real, and it is why two people either side of £100,000 can see surprisingly different value from the same £5,000 pay rise.

It also explains a move many higher earners make: pension contributions reduce the income figure used for the taper, so paying more into a pension can restore some or all of the lost allowance. That takes us to the next deduction on the list.

How do pension contributions change take home pay?

If you are in a workplace pension, your own contributions come out of your pay before it reaches you. Under auto-enrolment, your employer must also pay in: the employer minimum is 3% of your qualifying earnings, which for 2026/27 means the slice of your pay between £6,240 and £50,270 — not your whole salary. Your contribution is usually worked out on the same slice, which is why the pension line on a payslip is often smaller than people expect from the headline percentage.

The reduction in take home pay is usually gentler than the contribution itself, because pension saving gets tax relief. The exact mechanics depend on your scheme. Where contributions are taken from your pay before income tax is calculated, you never pay tax on that slice of earnings in the first place: as a simple illustration, a £100 monthly contribution typically costs a basic-rate taxpayer around £80 of take home pay, because the £100 was never taxed at 20%. Where your scheme claims relief in a different way, the same relief arrives through the scheme instead. Either way, the pattern holds — the drop in your bank balance is smaller than the amount going into the pension, and your employer is adding money on top that you would not otherwise have.

Salary-sacrifice schemes go one step further. You agree to a lower headline salary and your employer pays the difference into your pension, so the contribution reduces both your income tax and your National Insurance, not just the tax. If your employer offers sacrifice, the take home pay figures in this guide will not match your payslip until you run them on your reduced salary.

Two practical points follow. First, if you opt out of the pension, your take home pay rises — but only by your own contribution net of the tax relief you give up, and you lose the employer's 3% entirely, which is part of your pay package even though it never appears in your bank account. Second, if you increase your contributions — a common move for people caught by the £100,000 taper described above — the drop in take home pay will be noticeably less than the extra amount you pay in. Those contributions build the pension pot you will eventually draw on in retirement. Our pension annuity comparison shows what a 100,000-pound pot buys as a guaranteed income in November 2026.

How do student loan repayments change take home pay?

If you have a student loan, repayments are collected through payroll once your earnings pass the threshold for your loan plan, and they sit on your payslip as their own deduction line. They do not reduce your income tax or National Insurance — those are worked out on your full earnings regardless — so a student loan simply takes a further slice off what is left.

The details depend on your plan, and there are several: Plan 1, Plan 2, Plan 4 and Plan 5 for undergraduate loans, plus the separate Postgraduate Loan. Each plan has its own earnings threshold and repayment rate, charged as a percentage of what you earn above the threshold — not on your whole salary. With both an undergraduate loan and a Postgraduate Loan, both repayments can come out at once, which is why some graduates see two loan lines on a payslip.

Because repayments follow each pay period's earnings, the amount moves around. An overtime-heavy month or a bonus month takes a bigger repayment; a quiet month takes a smaller one or none at all. Nothing is repaid in a period where your earnings fall below your plan's threshold.

If you are not sure which plan you are on, your payslip or your online student loan account will tell you, and it is worth checking: the plan decides both the threshold and the rate, so two people on identical salaries can repay very different amounts. One more thing worth knowing — as a loan nears its end, payroll deductions can overshoot, because the system does not know your exact remaining balance. Graduates close to clearing a loan often switch to direct debit instead, so payments stop at the right moment.

Why is your take home pay different from the estimate?

Even with the right salary and the right tax year, real payslips regularly differ from clean estimates like the ones in this guide. These are the usual reasons, roughly in the order people meet them:

• Your tax code is not the standard one. Most employees with the full Personal Allowance have the code 1257L. A different code means HMRC has adjusted your allowance — for an underpayment collected through your pay, a company benefit, or a second job — and codes with "week 1" or "month 1" after them, or emergency codes, ignore what has happened earlier in the year and can take too much tax until they are corrected. Not sure what your code means? Check it with our free tax code checker — it explains your code and what it does to your pay.
• You are a Scottish taxpayer. Scottish income tax has its own bands and rates, so your income tax slice will not match the England, Wales and Northern Ireland figures in this guide, even on an identical salary.
• A bonus, commission or overtime landed this month. Income tax under PAYE is cumulative and usually settles down over the rest of the year, but National Insurance is charged on that month's higher earnings and does not get rebalanced, so a big month costs a little more National Insurance overall.
• Your pay is not spread evenly. Starting a job mid-year, taking unpaid leave, or being off sick can all change the picture — statutory sick pay is far below a normal salary, and if you want to see what it pays, the SSP calculator shows the current statutory figures. Employers who want those sickness records kept properly in the first place can compare the best absence management software for UK small businesses in our guide. Weekly-paid staff also meet an occasional year with 53 pay days, which shifts one period's deductions.
• You have deductions the basic estimate leaves out. Workplace pension contributions and student loan repayments are the big two, and both are covered in their own sections above. Union subscriptions, charitable giving through payroll and repayments of an overpaid salary come off take home pay too.
• You have more than one job. Your Personal Allowance usually sits against your main job, and a second job is often taxed at a flat rate on everything, which makes its take home pay look heavily taxed in isolation even when the overall year works out correctly.

If your take home pay looks wrong, check it in this order. First, confirm the tax code on your latest payslip is the one you expect — a wrong code is the most common cause, and HMRC can correct it so your employer taxes you properly from the next pay run. Second, compare the year-to-date columns with your last payslip of the previous tax year or your P60 to see whether the cumulative figures make sense. Third, look for a one-off payment or an unpaid absence that explains a single odd month. If none of that explains it, ask payroll to walk you through the calculation — they can see exactly which figures and code were used, and genuine payroll mistakes do happen.

How can you check your own take home pay in seconds?

Working through bands and thresholds by hand is the best way to understand the system, but it is not how you want to answer a quick question like "what is a £43,500 salary actually worth each month?" For that, use the take home pay calculator.

Enter your gross salary and it applies the 2026/27 Personal Allowance, income tax bands and National Insurance rates for you, showing the tax, the National Insurance and the resulting take home pay together — yearly and monthly — so you can compare it line by line with your payslip or with the examples in this guide. Try the salary you are on now, then the one from the job advert, the pay rise or the reduced-hours pattern you are weighing up. The difference between the two net figures, not the two gross ones, is the number your budget will actually feel.

Our NHS pay calculator guide works out NHS take-home pay by Agenda for Change band, with every band worked by hand.

If you run payroll for a small business as well as checking your own take-home pay, the software that works out these deductions matters too — our guide to comparing Sage and Xero for a small business works out the payroll, MTD and three-year costs for each.