Compare take-home pay across UK tax years using the same salary, pension, tax code, and student loan assumptions.
Use the same salary setup across multiple tax years to see how tax-year assumptions affect take-home pay. This helps make rule changes easier to understand.
On £35,000 a year with a standard 2026/27 tax code, no pension, no student loan, the figures work out like this. Open a calculator to put your own numbers in.
| 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 compare years, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
A tax year can raise your deductions without any rate rising, and this comparison is built to make that visible. When the Personal Allowance and the band boundaries are frozen while pay rises, a larger slice of the same real income falls above each threshold — the effect usually called fiscal drag. Comparing two years at the same salary isolates the rule change itself: any difference in the net figure is the year's doing, not yours. Comparing your old salary in the old year against your new salary in the new year, by contrast, mixes the two effects together, which is exactly what a payslip does and exactly why year-on-year payslips are hard to read.
The tool applies the same gross salary, pension setting, tax code basis and student-loan plan to each year's rules. That is a deliberate simplification: in reality your tax code often changes with the year, and a code carried forward from an old year is one of the commonest reasons a first April payslip looks wrong. If your code changed, run the comparison twice — once per code — and the two gaps show how much came from the year and how much from the code.
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.
Keeping the salary and deduction assumptions the same makes it easier to see the effect of tax-year rule changes rather than changes in pay.
No. It is a planning comparison. Important decisions should still be checked against official sources and payslip or payroll information.
Last updated 2026-08-28. 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.