How the income tax & take-home calculator works

Enter your gross annual salary and the calculator estimates your income tax, National Insurance and resulting take-home pay for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It applies the current personal allowance and tax bands, and the standard National Insurance thresholds.

It is a quick way to see the effect of a pay rise, a bonus or a change in hours. For a full picture — including pension contributions, benefits in kind, student loans or Scottish rates — talk to us and we will run the exact numbers.

Where the effective rate stops matching the band

Above £100,000 the personal allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 of income, which creates a stretch where each extra pound is effectively taxed at 60% — one and a half times the 40% headline rate. It is the single most valuable thing to know about the UK income tax system, because it is also where a pension contribution or a salary sacrifice does the most work.

Two other cliffs behave similarly: the high income child benefit charge, and the tapering of the pension annual allowance for higher earners. Someone caught by more than one at once can find that a pension contribution returns far more than the headline relief.

Not all income is taxed alike

Savings interest and dividends have separate allowances and separate rates, and they are treated as sitting on top of other income when deciding which band they fall in. That is why taking slightly more salary can push dividends into a higher band, and why two people with the same total income can pay very different tax.