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How we calculate your tax — UK Tax Calculator

UK Tax Calculator

How we calculate your taxmethodology2026/27 · Take-home & tax
Trust & method · updated for 2026/27

How we calculate your tax

Exactly what the calculator computes, the published figures it applies, and the official gov.uk source for each — so you can trust the numbers.

What this calculator does

UK Tax Calculator works out your take-home pay from a salary: income tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and student-loan repayments, for England, Scotland and the rest of the UK. It's built and maintained by a UK software engineer as a free, ad-light tool — not by HMRC or a financial adviser.

Every figure is for guidance only and is not personal financial or tax advice. For anything that affects a real decision, check the official gov.uk pages linked below or speak to a qualified adviser.

Which tax year we use

We support the 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27 tax years. The calculator always uses the year YOU select with the year picker — it never silently assumes the current date. The figures on this page are the published 2026/27 rates (the current default); the other years apply their own published values.

The key figures we apply (2026/27)

These are the headline thresholds and rates the engine applies for 2026/27. Each links to the authoritative gov.uk source. The numbers below are read directly from the calculator's own rate tables, so this page can't drift from what it actually computes.

£50,270

£125,140

£100,000

Income tax rates (basic / higher / additional)

gov.uk — Income Tax rates and bands

20% / 40% / 45%

Employee National Insurance (main / upper rate)

gov.uk — National Insurance rates and categories

8% / 2%

Student loan Plan 2 threshold

gov.uk — Repaying your student loan

£29,385

New State Pension (per week)

gov.uk — The new State Pension

£241/wk

Scotland & regions

Scottish taxpayers pay income tax at the Scottish rates and bands, which we apply when you choose Scotland (or a tax code starting with S). National Insurance is UK-wide. Wales currently mirrors the rest-of-UK income tax rates, so a Welsh salary is calculated the same as England.

What we don't model

To keep results honest, here's what the calculator deliberately does not do:

  • It is not connected to your HMRC account — it can't see your real tax code history or payments.
  • Projections (pension pot, inflation-adjusted retirement income) are estimates based on assumptions you set, not guaranteed outcomes.
  • It doesn't give personalised tax advice or cover every edge case (e.g. complex benefits-in-kind, multiple simultaneous jobs with split allowances).
  • Where a figure is an estimate or a future-year assumption, it's labelled as such in the tool.

Payslip & P60 checking

If you upload a payslip or P60, the calculator reads the figures on it (using on-device text recognition), reconciles them month-by-month, and flags discrepancies against the expected tax for the year. This is a checking aid, not an official assessment.

Your privacy

Every calculation runs entirely in your browser. Your salary and any uploaded payslip/P60 are processed on your device and are NOT sent to a server. Sharing a result is opt-in, and figures are only included in a shared link if you explicitly choose to add them.