Take-Home Pay Calculator
Income tax and National Insurance on a salary or on self-employed profits, for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Choose your tax year, and enter your tax code if you know it.
- Gross
- £0
- Pension
- £0
- Tax-free allowance
- £0
- Income Tax
- £0
- National Insurance
- £0
- Take-home a year
- £0
- A month
- £0
- A week
- £0
- Effective tax rate
- 0%
England, Wales and Northern Ireland only. Scottish income tax rates and bands are different.
What your tax code does
Your tax code tells your employer how much of your pay is tax free. The standard code is 1257L, which gives the full £12,570 Personal Allowance. The number is simply the allowance with the last digit removed.
Codes change for all sorts of reasons: underpaid tax from an earlier year being collected, a company car or medical cover, the Marriage Allowance, or a second job. That is the usual explanation when a payslip does not match a generic online calculator.
| Code | What it means |
|---|---|
| 1257L | The standard allowance of £12,570 |
| Other numbers, e.g. 1000L | Allowance of the number times ten, so £10,000 |
| BR | All income taxed at 20%, no allowance. Usually a second job |
| D0 / D1 | All income at 40% or 45%, no allowance |
| 0T | No allowance, but the normal bands apply |
| NT | No tax deducted |
| K codes | Untaxed income exceeds the allowance, so an amount is added to taxable pay |
| W1, M1 or X suffix | Emergency, non-cumulative. Each pay period taxed in isolation |
| S or C prefix | Scottish or Welsh rates. Scottish rates are not covered by this calculator |
The 60% trap between £100,000 and £125,140
Set the amount to £100,000, then to £125,000, and watch the effective rate climb.
The Personal Allowance is withdrawn by £1 for every £2 earned over £100,000. You lose the allowance itself, and you pay 40% on the income it used to cover. The combined effect is a marginal rate of 60% on every pound between £100,000 and £125,140.
Between £100,000 and £125,140, each extra pound costs 60p in tax. Above £125,140 it falls back to 45p.
Pension contributions reduce the income used for this test, which is why they are so effective in that band. A contribution bringing you back under £100,000 can attract relief at an effective 60%, and it has to be done before the tax year ends.
Note that if you enter a tax code, the calculator uses the allowance that code gives rather than working out the taper itself — because HMRC will normally have adjusted your code already.
Employed and self-employed are not taxed the same
Switch the dropdown at the same income and the take-home changes. Income tax is identical, but National Insurance differs: employees pay 8% on the band where the self-employed pay 6%.
That is not the whole picture. An employer also pays 15% employer National Insurance on salary above £5,000, which never appears on a payslip but is a real cost of employing someone. For a director deciding how to pay themselves, that is why salary alone is rarely the efficient answer — see the salary versus dividends calculator.
Next review April 2027.
This calculator gives a general estimate. It ignores student loan and postgraduate loan repayments, the High Income Child Benefit Charge, benefits in kind taxed through the code, other income, the Blind Person’s Allowance, and Scottish and Welsh rates. Non-cumulative codes are treated as annual. It is not a substitute for advice on your own circumstances.