UK Take-Home Pay Calculator — Methodology

Last verified 5 May 2026 against HMRC PAYE and NI guidance. Calculator at /uk/salary/take-home-pay-calculator/.

What this calculator does

Calculates monthly and annual net pay from a gross salary by applying UK or Scottish income tax bands, employee National Insurance, optional pension contributions, and a student loan plan. Models the personal allowance taper between £100,000 and £125,140.

The formula

Step 1 — Pension contribution (salary sacrifice):
  pensionable = gross × pensionPct / 100
  taxableGross = gross - pensionable

Step 2 — Personal Allowance:
  PA = £12,570
  if taxableGross > £100,000:
    PA = max(0, £12,570 - (taxableGross - £100,000) / 2)

Step 3 — Income tax (rUK 2026/27):
  taxable = max(0, taxableGross - PA)
  tax = sum over bands b of:
        min(taxable_in_band, b.width) × b.rate
  Bands: 20% to £37,700, 40% to £125,140, 45% above

  Scottish bands replace step 3 for Scottish taxpayers
  (S-prefixed tax code).

Step 4 — Employee NI (Class 1, 2026/27):
  PT = £12,570, UEL = £50,270
  ni = max(0, min(gross, UEL) - PT) × 0.08
     + max(0, gross - UEL) × 0.02

Step 5 — Student loan:
  if gross > planThreshold:
    loan = (gross - planThreshold) × planRate

Step 6:
  net = gross - tax - ni - pensionable - loan

Authoritative sources

Assumptions and limitations

Assumes Class 1 employee NI; self-employed Class 2/4 not modelled.
Pension is modelled as salary sacrifice (reducing both tax and NI). Net-pay and relief-at-source arrangements are handled separately in the Pension Tax Relief Calculator.
Tax codes other than the standard 1257L (or S1257L) are not modelled — K codes, BR, D0, NT etc. are out of scope.
Benefits in kind, company car BIK, and salary sacrifice on non-pension benefits are not modelled.
Marriage Allowance transfer and blind person's allowance are not applied.

Source data

The rates used by this calculator are exported as machine-readable CSVs:

Income tax rUK 2026/27 /data/income-tax-rUK-2026-27.csv
Income tax Scotland 2026/27 /data/income-tax-scotland-2026-27.csv
National Insurance 2026/27 /data/national-insurance-2026-27.csv

These CSVs regenerate automatically from our canonical rate data at every build, ensuring the calculator output and the published rate data stay in sync.

Verification log

5 May 2026: All PAYE / NI / student loan thresholds verified against HMRC publications via Cowork audit cycle 5
5 May 2026: £45k Scotland take-home reconciled to net £35,523.55; £35k rUK to net £28,719.60

Try the tool: UK Take-Home Pay Calculator →