Calculate estimated UK salary after tax, National Insurance, pension contributions, and student loan deductions.
Use this page to compare common UK salaries after Income Tax, National Insurance, pension contributions, and student loan deductions. Open a salary example, then adjust the real deduction assumptions in the calculator.
Type a salary to see the take-home figure for it.
Of £35,000.00 gross a year: Income Tax £4,486.00, National Insurance £1,794.40, Take-home £28,719.60.
Saving £120 a month — about 5% of this take-home — becomes £7,941.48 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. |
|---|
The figures on this page are worked from salary after tax, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
Start from a common annual gross salary, open the generated after-tax page, then adjust pension, student loan, tax code, region, bonus, or other income in the calculator.
Salary after-tax examples use standard PAYE assumptions unless a page says otherwise. Actual payslips can move because of pension method, tax code, salary sacrifice, student loans, benefits, bonuses, overtime or payroll timing.
An after-tax figure is an annual answer to an annual question, and most spending decisions are monthly. Divide by twelve and the number looks clean, but the first payslip of a new job, a bonus month, or a tax-code change can each move a single month a long way from that average while leaving the year's total exactly right — cumulative PAYE settles differences in one payslip rather than spreading them. The other common misreading is the marginal step: the salary one pound into a new band pays the higher rate only on that pound, not on everything, so the examples either side of a band boundary sit closer together than most people expect. Where an example and a real payslip disagree by more than rounding, the cause is nearly always an assumption — pension method, an inherited tax code, a student-loan plan — rather than the arithmetic, and identifying which one is what the payslip diagnostic is for.
This estimate is worked out on £35,000 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.
Common annual salaries, worked through PAYE for the current tax year.
Higher-income examples where taper, pension and student-loan assumptions can matter more.
Move from annual salary after tax into region, hourly, student-loan and pension-sacrifice views.
187 pages in this set, each showing the calculation for a different figure.
It starts from the question on this page, shows the useful salary assumptions, and opens PayBreakdown's calculator so gross pay, take-home pay, tax, National Insurance, pension, student loan, region, and tax-code settings can be adjusted.
Yes. Open the calculator from this page to change salary, hours, pension, student loan, tax year, region, tax code, bonus, and other pay settings.
Pick the closest annual gross salary first, then open the calculator from the page if you need to change pension, student loan, region, tax code, bonus or other income settings.
It lists the salaries people check most often. Any other figure can be typed straight into the calculator, which works the same way for a salary that has no page 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.