£3,000 a month is about £2,453 after tax on the standard code. How cumulative PAYE works a monthly payslip out, and why months differ.
Monthly take-home pay is the gross monthly amount less PAYE Income Tax, employee National Insurance, any pension contribution and any student loan repayment. On the standard code, £3,000 a month leaves about £2,453. Income Tax is worked out on the cumulative basis: every pay day totals the year so far, releases one twelfth of the tax-free allowance for each month passed, and settles the difference in that payslip. National Insurance in real payroll carries nothing forward.
Enter your monthly gross pay to see what lands after deductions.
Of £36,000.00 gross a year: Income Tax £4,686.00, National Insurance £1,874.40, Take-home £29,439.60.
Saving £125 a month — about 5% of this take-home — becomes £8,272.38 in five years at an example 4%: try the savings calculator.
2026/27 rates, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, no student loan. Open the full calculator to change region, student loan or pension method.
Payslip showing different figures? The payslip checker works out what your pay and tax code should have produced and shows which assumption could explain the gap.
| Tax/source year | 2026/27 |
|---|---|
| Region | England/Wales/Northern Ireland |
| Tax code basis | 1257L where the page uses PAYE defaults |
| Pension basis | No pension deduction unless this example says otherwise |
| Student loan basis | No student loan unless selected in this example |
| Gross pay | Employment pay before PAYE deductions and pension or loan settings. |
|---|---|
| Income Tax | Tax estimated from the selected tax-year, region, tax code and taxable-pay assumptions. |
| National Insurance | Employee NI is calculated separately from Income Tax and may not follow the same bands. |
| Pension and loans | Pension method and student-loan plan can change take-home pay and payslip comparisons. |
| Pension contribution | Changing the rate or method can change taxable income, National Insurance and take-home pay. |
|---|---|
| Tax code and region | Scottish Income Tax, Welsh codes, emergency tax or a non-standard tax code can move the result. |
| Student loan plan | A different plan can change deductions because each plan uses its own threshold and repayment rate. |
| Bonus, overtime or second job | Extra pay and payroll timing can make a real payslip differ from the smooth annual estimate. |
| Tax code | HMRC tax-code changes, K codes, BR/D codes, or emergency markers can change PAYE deductions. |
|---|---|
| Cumulative basis | Week 1, Month 1 or non-cumulative payroll can differ from a smooth annual calculator estimate. |
| Pension method | Relief at source, net pay and salary sacrifice can affect taxable pay and take-home pay differently. |
| Payroll timing | Bonus, overtime, arrears, refunds, cut-off dates and corrections can all move a single payslip. |
| Why is the tax on my payslip higher than expected? | payslip difference |
|---|---|
| What do the main payslip lines mean? | payslip explainer |
| What tax code should I use for modelling? | tax code |
| How much does pension reduce take-home pay? | pension comparison |
| How does this affect a monthly budget? | budget planning |
| What is not decided here | PayBreakdown does not decide payroll correctness, lender approval, benefit entitlement or employer compliance, and does not give regulated financial, mortgage, debt, tax, payroll or legal advice. |
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The figures on this page are worked from monthly take-home, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
PAYE on a cumulative tax code does not tax each month on its own. In month 1, payroll gives you one twelfth of the free pay your code allows and taxes what is left. In month 6, it totals your pay for the year to date, sets six twelfths of the free pay against that total, works out the tax due on it, then subtracts the tax already deducted in months 1 to 5. What remains is that month's deduction. The Income Tax bands are released the same way, one twelfth of each band width per month, which is what makes uneven pay behave oddly.
On an unchanged salary with an unchanged code, twelve months look identical. They stop looking identical as soon as something moves the year-to-date total: a bonus, a mid-year rise, arrears, an unpaid month, or a new tax code. The correction lands in one payslip instead of being spread across the rest, which is why a single month can show a much larger deduction, or a refund, with nothing wrong. A month 1 code stops the catch-up entirely and taxes each period in isolation.
A bonus paid part-way through the year arrives in a payslip where only part of the annual allowance and only part of each band have been released. The pay for the year to date jumps; the band width released so far does not. A slice of the total is therefore charged at the next rate up, even in cases where the full year's pay would sit below that band altogether. That is why the bonus payslip looks out of proportion to the bonus. From the next pay day onward the allowance and the bands keep accruing at one twelfth a month while pay returns to its usual amount, so the running total catches up with the tax already deducted. By the twelfth payslip the year's Income Tax is the tax due on the year's total pay, and the bonus has changed which payslip carried it rather than how much there was.
Employee National Insurance is not worked out cumulatively. In real payroll each pay period is charged on its own earnings against that period's own thresholds, which HMRC publishes as weekly and monthly cash amounts alongside the annual ones, and nothing unused is carried into the next period. Company directors are the exception, because their contributions are worked out over an annual earnings period. The estimate on this page reproduces neither arrangement. It multiplies the monthly figure back to a year and charges one year of earnings against one year of thresholds.
If you know only the annual salary, divide it by twelve and enter that as monthly gross. The figure is multiplied back to an annual amount before deductions are worked out, because the Personal Allowance, £12,570 on a standard code, and the Income Tax bands are annual figures that cannot be applied to a single month on its own. On that basis the estimate assumes twelve equal payments, one cumulative code held all year, the standard employee National Insurance category and no student loan. It cannot reproduce a month 1 code, and it cannot show the per-period National Insurance effect set out above.
This estimate is worked out on £36,000 annual gross. Change any of those and the take-home figure moves; pension method and student loan plan usually move it most. A payslip can differ from any calculator because payroll works pay period by pay period, so a tax-code change, a bonus, arrears or a refund can land in one month and not the next. See how each deduction is worked out.
Something has moved the year-to-date total that PAYE recalculates on every pay day. Overtime, a bonus, arrears, a backdated rise, an unpaid or part month, a second income being coded, or a new code from HMRC will all do it. Your payslip carries taxable pay to date and tax to date, and a change between one month and the next shows up in those two figures.
No. There is no separate rate for a bonus and payroll does not treat it as its own pot of income. It is added to the pay for the year to date and taxed with everything else. The bonus payslip looks severe because only part of the year's allowance and band width has been released by that point, so more of the running total sits above the released band than will by the end of the year.
For Income Tax on a steady salary held on one cumulative code, they come to nearly the same figure, with small differences from rounding each month. For National Insurance the annual figure here is a model rather than a total of twelve real periods, so pay that actually arrived unevenly can add up to something else on the payslips.
Before deductions, yes, where the salary is paid in twelve equal amounts. After deductions the relationship is not proportional, because the allowance and the bands are annual amounts released one twelfth at a time. Extra pay in one month is charged against a running total that has moved, not at a rate of its own.
Last updated 2026-08-27. Checked by Sean Elsmore. Rates last checked against GOV.UK on 2026-08-07. Estimates are for planning and should be checked against official records where the decision matters.