UK Income Tax & Take-Home Pay Calculator
Enter a gross salary to see take-home pay after income tax, national insurance, pension contributions and student loan repayments, Scottish bands included.
About your salary
What you actually take home
- Gross salary
- £45,000
- Pension
- £2,250
- Personal allowance
- £12,570
- Income tax
- £6,036
- National insurance
- £2,414
- Student loan
- £0
- Effective rate
- 18.8%
- Take-home76%
- Income tax13%
- National insurance5%
- Pension5%
Estimates only, based on published HMRC rates. Not financial advice.
UK take-home pay is gross salary minus income tax, national insurance, pension contributions and any student loan repayment. Each is calculated differently, which is why the total rarely matches a rough guess.
How to use it
- 1Enter your gross annual salary.
- 2Add pension contributions and your student loan plan if they apply.
- 3Set the tax year and region, then read the monthly and annual breakdown.
How income tax is worked out
Income tax is banded, not flat. The personal allowance is tax free, then each slice above it is taxed at its own rate, the basic rate applies only to the slice inside the basic band, not to your whole salary. Moving into a higher band therefore never reduces your take-home pay; only the income above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate.
Scotland sets its own bands and rates for earned income, so a Scottish taxpayer and a taxpayer elsewhere in the UK on identical salaries take home different amounts. National insurance thresholds are UK-wide regardless.
The 60% trap between £100,000 and £125,140
For every £2 of income above £100,000, £1 of personal allowance is withdrawn. That withdrawal is itself effectively taxed, producing a marginal rate of around 60% on that band, the highest marginal rate in the system, higher than the additional rate above it.
The usual response is a pension contribution or salary sacrifice that brings adjusted net income back to £100,000. In that band, roughly £4 of every £10 diverted into a pension would have reached your bank account anyway, which is why it's such a common piece of advice for people earning just over the threshold.
Pensions and student loans
A pension contribution reduces the income that tax is calculated on, so the cost to your take-home is always less than the amount contributed. Under salary sacrifice it also reduces national insurance for both you and your employer, which is why many employers prefer that arrangement.
Student loan repayments are a fixed percentage of income above a plan-specific threshold, and the plan you're on depends on when and where you started studying. Postgraduate loans are repaid on top of an undergraduate plan, not instead of it, so someone with both is repaying two percentages simultaneously.
Common questions
- What's the difference between gross and net pay?
- Gross pay is your salary before deductions. Net pay, or take-home, is what actually reaches your bank account after income tax, national insurance, pension contributions and any student loan repayment.
- Will a pay rise into the higher rate band leave me worse off?
- No. Only the income above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate, so more gross always means more net. The one distortion is between £100,000 and £125,140, where the personal allowance taper pushes the marginal rate to around 60%, you still keep more, just much less of each extra pound.
- Why doesn't this match my payslip exactly?
- Payslips reflect your actual tax code, which may include adjustments for benefits in kind, underpaid tax from earlier years, or a second job. This calculator assumes a standard code and a full tax year.
- Does it cover Scottish income tax?
- Yes. Choose Scotland as the region and the Scottish bands and rates are applied to earned income. National insurance is the same across the UK.
- Is my salary information stored?
- No. Every figure is calculated in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, logged or saved.