Calculation Methodology and Sources

Scope

takehome.info estimates employment take-home pay for a steady salary in the current and supported historical UK tax years. It covers England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scottish non-savings, non-dividend employment income. It is not a payroll product, Self Assessment return or personal tax advice.

A gross-pay figure can represent base hours only, in which case additional-hours pay is added, or base and additional hours together, in which case the calculator splits that total using the entered hours and multiplier.

Next tax year: 2027/28 (draft)

Preparation is in progress. 2027/28 is not available in the calculators: Scottish bands and the full payroll rules still need verification. Current and historical estimates continue to use their own selected-year rules.

Budget announcements and what is still being checked

The published UK employment Income Tax rates, standard Personal Allowance and ordinary employee NI rates are unchanged for 2027/28. This does not establish the final Scottish bands or a complete future-year calculation. HMRC announced rates.

The announced Plan 1 annual threshold is £28,005; Plan 2 remains £29,385 under the existing freeze. These future-year amounts are not used in current estimates. Other loan-plan and payroll tables must be checked before release. Plan 1 announcement · Plan 2 freeze.

Property and savings income have separate announced rates from April 2027. The salary tools do not calculate savings or dividends, and the simplified other-income field excludes rental/property income. Budget tax measures.

The Scottish Budget is scheduled for 3 December 2026. Announcements must be checked against final legislation, resolutions and HMRC/SLC payroll guidance before enabling the year. Scottish Budget timing.

Reviewed 2026-10-31. A new production build and deployment are required for the April tax-year rollover; this static website does not publish new rates automatically.

Income Tax

Each archived year uses its published standard Personal Allowance, starting-rate band where one applied, basic-rate limit, higher rate and any additional rate. The 10% starting rate on employment income is included from 2000/01 through 2007/08. The additional rate is included from 2010/11, at 50% until 2012/13 and 45% thereafter.

The Personal Allowance taper above £100,000 is applied from 2010/11, when it came into effect. Selecting a year loads that year’s standard tax code. Numeric tax codes are otherwise treated as ten times the number shown. K codes create a negative allowance and Income Tax is capped at 50% of relevant pay in this estimate.

BR, D0, D1, NT, 0T and their recognised Scottish or Welsh prefixes are supported using the rates for the selected year. Scotland uses the main UK bands before 2017/18 and its published devolved employment-income bands from 2017/18 onward.

National Insurance

Employee Class 1 National Insurance is calculated for the selected pay schedule, then annualised. Every year uses its own Class 1 primary threshold, upper earnings limit and employee rates. This includes the introduction of the contribution above the upper limit in 2003/04, the rate rise in 2011/12, and dated payroll rules for the in-year rate and threshold changes in 2022/23 and 2023/24. Steady pay is assumed at tax-month end or regular weekly-period ends, with one-off pay in the final period. Actual dates can change historical NI. Director annual NI and historical contracted-out rebates are not modelled. Category A is the default, with common reduced, deferment and State-Pension-age categories calculated at the selected year’s rates.

Pensions and loans

Salary sacrifice reduces cash, taxable, NI and loan pay. Net pay contributions reduce Income Tax pay but not NI or loan pay. Relief at source deducts the net contribution from take-home and shows the provider top-up at the selected year’s basic rate; extra higher-rate relief is not added to the main calculator because it may need to be claimed separately. Percentage contributions use base pay by default; additional-hours pay is included only when that option is selected.

The salary sacrifice calculator uses the same engine with a separate additional sacrifice and optional taxable income charged at ordinary non-savings rates. The simplified other-income field excludes rental/property income, savings, dividends, trading income and another job; it is not an adjusted-net-income-only input. Pensioner-specific allowances are not assessed. It can include further relief-at-source relief claimed through HMRC for standard codes, showing an annual settled estimate rather than immediate payroll cash. Custom tax codes may already contain relief, so no additional claim is added for them. Adjusted net income includes all taxable benefits even when Income Tax is collected through a tax-code adjustment.

Future pension salary-sacrifice NI changes

Not applied to this selected tax year. From 6 April 2029, pension salary sacrifice above £2,000 per tax year is due to attract employee and employer Class 1 NI on the excess. Income Tax relief and the reduction in adjusted net income are unchanged by this reform. This is not a pension contribution cap and does not apply to car salary sacrifice. Detailed payroll operation must be verified before implementation. HMRC reform details.

The bonus calculator compares two complete engine runs, with and without one cash bonus. Each deduction is the difference between those runs, not a flat bonus tax rate. Optional bonus pension contributions use the selected pension method; explicit bonus salary sacrifice reduces NI and loan earnings in the one bonus payment period. Fixed benefits and regular pensions are held unchanged. Results estimate annual economic impact, not exact bonus-month PAYE; no loan refunds or pension allowance charges are included.

The pay rise calculator compares a full year at each regular salary using that same engine. Percentage pensions scale with each salary; fixed pensions, benefits and post-tax deductions stay fixed. Its optional monthly take-home target reuses the annual reverse search with current salary as a lower bound and a £1/month precision check. Inflation uses compounded gross-pay growth against a user-entered rate, not subtraction or a household-budget forecast.

Student loans use a single shared PAYE implementation, with thresholds, rates and availability stored in the selected tax year’s configuration. Relevant earnings follow employer secondary Class 1 NI earnings, not taxable income after ordinary pension deductions. Qualifying salary sacrifice reduces them; net-pay and relief-at-source pensions do not. Weekly/monthly thresholds are rounded down to pennies and deductions down to whole pounds. For multiple-week payroll, earnings are averaged weekly, the weekly deduction is rounded, then multiplied by the weeks. Regular pay is modelled evenly across the year and a one-off payment is assigned to one period. Annual totals reconcile to those rounded deductions; monthly and weekly equivalents are not exact payslips. Undergraduate and postgraduate deductions are independent and displayed separately. Plan 1 thresholds begin in 2000/01, Plan 2 in 2016/17, Plan 4 in 2021/22, and Plan 5 in 2026/27. Postgraduate loan deductions are available from 2019/20.

Student Loan Repayment Calculator · Historical thresholds · HMRC payroll basis and rounding. The model does not cover Self Assessment loan repayments, multiple jobs, protected-earnings orders, loan balances or refunds.

Redundancy and leaving payments

Select “Redundancy pay” to treat the one-off amount as qualifying compensation for loss of employment. The unused part of the combined £30,000 exemption is excluded from Income Tax. Qualifying redundancy above that amount is taxable, but the whole qualifying payment is excluded from employee National Insurance and payroll loan deductions. It is also excluded from the pay available for payroll pension and benefit salary sacrifice in this model.

Taxable notice pay, including PILON or PENP confirmed by your employer, holiday pay and other leaving earnings are entered separately and added once under the usual earnings rules. Related awards may share the exemption, including across tax years. The exemption-used field only reduces the exemption available; earlier taxable income must already be reflected in the earnings supplied for the relevant year.

The impact panel compares annual results with and without the leaving payments. Enter expected gross earnings for the whole tax year, including earnings from any new employment. Normal periods assume a steady salary; the payment-month view combines a normal month with the annual difference. It does not reproduce a final payslip, irregular earnings, a leaving date, P45 processing or tax already paid. Employer Class 1A NI is not an employee deduction. Non-cash termination benefits, direct employer pension settlements and special exemptions need a separate assessment.

Sources: HMRC termination payment guidance and HMRC payroll student-loan earnings rules.

Workplace benefits

Benefit reporting and future changes

For this tax year, follow your employer’s actual reporting method. Mandatory payrolling of company cars, fuel, vans and employer-provided medical benefits is announced from 6 April 2027, not for this selected year. HMRC benefit reporting dates.

Add the full employer-reported taxable value for Income Tax unless it is already represented in the tax code you entered. The reporting change is not a new tax exemption. If your code still contains an old benefit adjustment, check it with HMRC rather than changing the benefit value to compensate.

Use the taxable value for the selected tax year, not the lease cost or salary given up. This tool does not calculate vehicle valuations. Further company-car percentage changes are announced from 6 April 2030; they are not used to revalue your current benefit. HMRC company-car changes.

Benefits are separated into four pay effects so the same model can represent different employer schemes. Cash allowances are added to salary and included for Income Tax, employee National Insurance and loan deductions. Salary sacrifice reduces cash, taxable, NI and loan pay. A post-tax employee payment reduces take-home only. Benefit amounts can be entered annually or monthly; monthly figures are converted to annual values before the tax calculation.

A non-cash taxable value is included for Income Tax without being added to cash pay. It is excluded from employee NI and student-loan pay by default, which is the usual treatment for benefits subject only to employer Class 1A NI, such as employer-arranged medical insurance and company cars. An override is available for benefits that are subject to employee Class 1 NI. If a benefit is already represented by the tax code entered in the calculator, selecting that option prevents the value being added twice.

Company-car calculations use the final annual taxable value from the employer, P11D or HMRC calculator rather than trying to infer it from a vehicle description. This accommodates list price, availability, emissions, fuel, employee contributions and salary-sacrifice rules. Employee car ownership schemes are not automatically treated as company cars; they are calculated from the cash allowance, employee payment and any separately reported taxable value entered by the user.

Independent comparison

Representative results across the full date range are regression-checked against ListenToTaxman, including starting-rate, higher-rate, Scottish and mid-year National Insurance cases. Official HMRC or Scottish Government figures take precedence if a third-party result differs.

Small differences can be legitimate. ListenToTaxman displays the maximum allowance implied by a tax code—for example £12,579 for 1257L—whereas takehome.info uses the statutory £12,570 standard allowance. takehome.info also applies the selected payroll frequency’s rounded NI thresholds.

Larger archived-result differences are deliberately not copied: ListenToTaxman’s 2017/18 Scottish result currently uses a £11,859 allowance rather than the official £11,500; its high-income 2018/19 and 2019/20 Scottish results reduce a taxable £150,000 rate limit by the standard allowance; and its 2024/25 Scottish result currently applies 47% above £125,140 rather than the published 48% top rate.

Official sources

Rounding and limitations

Results are rounded to the nearest penny after each annual calculation. Real payroll uses statutory period rounding and cumulative records. A one-off bonus is assigned to one payroll period for National Insurance and loan deductions; the normal-period and bonus-period views reconcile to the year total, which counts the bonus once. Additional-hours pay assumes the same hours and multiplier every week, so an irregular payment can differ. The benefit fields depend on the taxable values and payroll treatment supplied by the employer; the calculator does not determine whether a scheme qualifies for an exemption. Multiple jobs, directors’ NI, childcare charges, marriage allowance transfers, blind person’s allowance, Scottish savings income, payroll giving, attachment orders and irregular historic pay are outside the model.

Use the official check when the exact amount matters

Compare the result with your payslip and HMRC’s current-year estimator, or ask a qualified adviser about a decision with tax consequences.