UK Salary Calculator

Your PAYE tax code is the instruction your employer's payroll follows to work out how much Income Tax to deduct from this employment — not a summary of your overall tax position. HMRC issues it based on your circumstances, and it can change during the year.

1257L is the standard code most people with one job and the full tax-free Personal Allowance are on — it's what this calculator uses unless you change it. Other codes exist for other situations: BR taxes everything at the basic rate with no tax-free allowance (common for a second job), D0 and D1 do the same at the higher and additional rates, 0T removes the tax-free allowance entirely, and a 'K' code (e.g. K475) adds extra taxable pay instead of granting an allowance, usually to collect tax on a benefit or a previous underpayment elsewhere.

The prefix matters too. An S-prefixed code (e.g. S1257L) tells payroll to use Scottish Income Tax rates and bands; a C-prefixed code (e.g. C1257L) tells it to use Welsh rates. A code with neither prefix is taxed under England & Northern Ireland's rates. This isn't an exhaustive list of every code HMRC issues — it covers the codes this calculator recognises and the situations they most commonly reflect.

This calculator reads the tax code you enter literally, exactly as your employer's payroll would, rather than assuming everyone is on the standard code. That's a deliberate design choice: two people on the same salary can have very different take-home pay if their tax codes differ.

The headline Income Tax figure this calculator shows is an estimate of what PAYE would deduct from THIS employment, using the tax code you entered — the same mechanism your actual payroll runs. It is not necessarily the same as your final, statutory Income Tax liability for the year.

Those two figures can differ for several genuine reasons: you have more than one job or pension, you have other income HMRC taxes separately (such as savings interest above your allowance, dividends, or rental income), you receive a taxable benefit like a company car, your tax code changes part-way through the year, or you're due to claim additional pension tax relief that isn't yet reflected in your code (see "Pension contributions" below).

This isn't a flaw in the calculation — it's how PAYE itself works, by design. HMRC reconciles most employees' actual position automatically, and adjusts a future tax code when it doesn't match. This calculator estimates the PAYE deduction accurately for the code and salary you give it; it can't know about income or circumstances outside what you've entered.

This calculator assumes 12 equal, regular monthly salary payments across the tax year — it doesn't model bonuses, irregular pay, or a mid-year start. Income Tax is simulated period by period using HMRC's own PAYE tax table routine, applied to the tax code you entered, rather than a single annual sum.

Most tax codes are calculated cumulatively: each month's tax-free pay and tax bands build up across the year, so an underpayment in one month is usually corrected automatically in the next. A code marked Week 1/Month 1 (sometimes shown as 'M1' or 'X' on a payslip) is calculated non-cumulatively instead — each month stands alone, as if it were the first pay of the year, which is common just after starting a job or a tax-code change.

UK Income Tax isn't the same everywhere. Scotland sets its own rates and bands under devolved powers, with more bands than the rest of the UK and different thresholds — a Scottish taxpayer's tax code carries an S prefix (e.g. S1257L) to tell payroll to use them. Wales has the power to set its own rates too, and a Welsh taxpayer's code carries a C prefix (e.g. C1257L) — currently Wales has chosen rates identical to England & Northern Ireland's, but that's a current policy choice, not something built into how the system works, and it can change in a future tax year. A code with neither prefix is taxed under England & Northern Ireland's rates and bands.

This calculator asks you to select your region separately from your tax code, and checks the two are consistent — for example, it won't let an S-prefixed code be combined with the England & Northern Ireland region, since that combination couldn't genuinely occur on a real payslip.

National Insurance and Student Loan repayments are not devolved — the same rates and thresholds apply UK-wide regardless of region.

This calculator models employee Class 1 National Insurance, category A — the category that covers most employees. It assumes regular monthly pay, and applies HMRC's published monthly thresholds separately to each of the 12 simulated pay periods, rather than working out one figure from your annual salary. That mirrors how NI is actually deducted through payroll: period by period, not as a single yearly calculation.

Pay between the Primary Threshold and the Upper Earnings Limit is charged at the main employee rate; pay above the Upper Earnings Limit is charged at the lower additional rate. Salary Sacrifice reduces the pay National Insurance is calculated on, because it genuinely lowers your contractual salary; Relief at Source and Net Pay Arrangement pension contributions do not.

This calculator supports the undergraduate repayment Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5, and the Postgraduate Loan, each with its own annual repayment threshold and rate, deducted using HMRC's monthly payroll thresholds rather than a single annual figure — again matching how repayments are actually taken through payroll.

If you have more than one undergraduate plan (for example, an older Plan 1 loan and a newer Plan 2 loan), only one undergraduate repayment is deducted — the plans don't stack, and HMRC's own payroll guidance directs using whichever plan applies to your current, active loan. A Postgraduate Loan is different: it's a separate deduction that can apply alongside an undergraduate plan, at its own lower rate and threshold, both taken from the same pay.

Plan 5 has its own timing worth knowing: by regulation, no Plan 5 borrower owed any repayment during the 2025-26 tax year, however much they earned. Plan 5 repayment obligations begin from the start of the 2026-27 tax year onward.

Whichever pension arrangement you choose, the percentage or amount you enter always represents the TOTAL, gross amount going into your pension — not just the amount deducted from your pay. For example, a £60,000 salary with a 5% pension means £3,000 a year reaches the pension either way; how that £3,000 is made up, and what it does to your PAYE deduction, differs by arrangement.

Relief at Source: your pension provider claims basic-rate tax relief from HMRC and adds it to your pot on top of what's deducted from your pay — so on a 5%/£3,000 example, roughly £2,400 comes out of your pay and the provider adds roughly £600. Because the deduction happens after tax, it doesn't reduce the salary PAYE calculates Income Tax on.

Net Pay Arrangement: the full £3,000 is deducted from your pay before Income Tax is worked out, so you get relief automatically at your own tax rate through payroll. It's still deducted after National Insurance.

Salary Sacrifice: you formally agree to a lower salary, and your employer pays the full £3,000 into your pension instead. Because your official salary is genuinely lower, both PAYE Income Tax and National Insurance are calculated on the reduced amount.

These three arrangements do not produce the same take-home pay for the same contribution — see the worked example below for how they actually compare on one salary.

See what a workplace pension could grow to, what you could save toward a goal, or what a mortgage on your take-home pay might look like.