Take-Home Pay Calculator UK
Free UK take-home pay calculator: enter your gross annual salary to instantly estimate Income Tax, National Insurance and student loan repayments, with separate Scottish tax bands.
What is a UK take-home pay calculator?
This calculator estimates your take-home (net) pay from your gross annual UK salary by applying Income Tax, Class 1 employee National Insurance, and — if applicable — student loan repayments for the 2026/27 tax year.
Unlike a flat-percentage estimate, it correctly models the Personal Allowance taper above £100,000 (which creates a well-known 60% effective marginal rate band) and applies the distinct 6-band Scottish Income Tax system if you select Scotland, rather than assuming the same rates apply across the whole UK.
How the calculation works
- Enter your gross salary Type your gross annual salary in pounds, or use the slider.
- Select where you pay tax Choose Scotland if you are a Scottish taxpayer; otherwise choose England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
- Choose your student loan plan Select your repayment plan (1, 2, 4 or 5), and tick the box if you also have a Postgraduate Loan.
- Read the result Your Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan repayments and net pay appear instantly, along with the employer cost.
Tips for getting more out of it
- If your income is between £100,000 and £125,140, every extra £1 you earn effectively loses 60p to tax and lost Personal Allowance combined — this calculator shows that band automatically.
- Student loan and Postgraduate Loan repayments are worked out on separate thresholds and added together, so having both can noticeably reduce your take-home pay compared to just one.
- Scottish Income Tax only changes how much Income Tax you pay — National Insurance and student loan rules are exactly the same as the rest of the UK.
- Salary sacrifice pension contributions reduce your gross taxable pay before Income Tax and National Insurance are calculated, which this simple calculator does not model — check your payslip for the exact effect.
- The Marriage Allowance lets a lower earner transfer up to £1,260 of their unused Personal Allowance to a spouse or civil partner, which can reduce a couple's combined tax bill even though this calculator treats each income independently.
Payslip terms explained
- Personal Allowance
- The amount of income you can earn each year before paying any Income Tax — £12,570 for most people in 2026/27, tapering to £0 for income above £125,140.
- National Insurance
- A separate payroll deduction from Income Tax that funds the State Pension and certain benefits. Employees pay Class 1 contributions at 8% (dropping to 2% above the Upper Earnings Limit).
- Scottish Income Tax
- A distinct set of Income Tax bands and rates (Starter, Basic, Intermediate, Higher, Advanced, Top) that apply if your main home is in Scotland, set by the Scottish Parliament rather than Westminster.
- Student loan repayment plan
- The scheme (Plan 1, 2, 4 or 5) that determines your student loan repayment threshold and rate, based on where and when you started your course.
- Postgraduate Loan
- A separate loan for postgraduate study, repaid at 6% of income above £21,000, independently of and in addition to any undergraduate (Plan 1/2/4/5) loan repayments.
- Upper Earnings Limit
- The income threshold (£50,270 in 2026/27) above which the employee National Insurance rate drops from 8% to 2%.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — why does the UK tax salary and National Insurance separately?
Unlike many countries that combine income tax and social security into a single payroll deduction, the UK keeps Income Tax and National Insurance as two entirely separate systems, administered under different legislation and, historically, collected for different purposes. Income Tax funds general government spending, while National Insurance was originally designed as a contributory scheme: pay in during your working life, and become entitled to the State Pension and certain contributory benefits later.
Scotland gaining the power to set its own Income Tax bands is a relatively recent development, following the Scotland Act 2016. Since then, the Scottish Parliament has gradually diverged from the rest of the UK, adding extra bands (six instead of three) and adjusting thresholds independently — while National Insurance, set by Westminster, has remained identical across the whole UK. This is why two employees with the same salary can end up with different Income Tax bills purely based on which side of the border they live on, while paying exactly the same National Insurance.
The 60% effective marginal tax rate between £100,000 and £125,140 is one of the more counter-intuitive quirks of the UK tax system, and it is not a separate tax band at all — it is simply the combined effect of the 40% higher rate plus the gradual loss of the Personal Allowance. Because the allowance shrinks by £1 for every £2 earned in this range, taxable income actually grows 1.5 times faster than gross income does, which is exactly why the marginal rate on that stretch ends up at 40% × 1.5 = 60% rather than the 40% many people expect.