An umbrella assignment rate down to take-home: margin, employer National Insurance and the Apprenticeship Levy come out first, then Income Tax and NI.
An umbrella assignment rate is not a salary and is not your gross pay. On £60,000 a year with a £1,560 margin, £8,753.25 leaves the rate before your gross pay exists — the umbrella's fee, employer National Insurance and the Apprenticeship Levy — which is 14.59% of the headline figure. Gross pay is £51,246.75, and take-home is £40,280.51. This is a planning estimate, not payroll and not employment advice.
Enter the rate you were quoted and the umbrella's margin. Everything above your gross pay comes out first.
The first three rows come out of the assignment rate before your gross pay exists. That is £8,753.25 a year, or 14.59% of the headline figure, and it is why the rate you were quoted is not a salary. Income Tax and employee National Insurance then apply to what is left.
Rolled-up holiday pays the 12.07% uplift with every invoice, so nothing is held back for leave. Either way the year comes out the same: the choice changes when you are paid, not how much.
2026/27 rates, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, no student loan. Open the full calculator to change region 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 |
| 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 umbrella take-home, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
This is the whole confusion the page answers, and it is where a general salary calculator gets an umbrella rate wrong: it treats the rate as a salary and reports a take-home that is too high by the entire employer block.
The umbrella is your employer. An employer owes employer National Insurance and, where its pay bill has used up the Apprenticeship Levy allowance, the levy as well. For an umbrella running a large pay bill, it normally has. Those are the umbrella's liabilities, but they are funded from the assignment rate, because the rate is what the client agreed to pay for the assignment in total.
So the order is: rate, minus margin, minus employer National Insurance, minus levy, equals gross pay. Only at that point do Income Tax, employee National Insurance, student loan and pension apply.
Umbrella holiday pay is a timing choice, not an amount. Rolled-up pays the uplift with every invoice. Accrued holds it back and returns it when you take leave.
Over a full year the two produce the same take-home. What changes is how much arrives in an ordinary month and how large the pot is when you stop working. Accrued suits anyone who wants leave to be paid; rolled-up suits anyone who would rather hold the money themselves.
The one thing to check is that an accrued pot is actually returned. It is your money either way.
Working through an umbrella and being inside IR35 are different things that often travel together. An umbrella employs you and runs PAYE, so IR35 does not apply to the umbrella arrangement itself: you are an employee of the umbrella.
An inside-IR35 engagement through your own limited company is a separate calculation, where the fee-payer deducts tax and National Insurance before paying your company. The take-home figures differ, and the comparison is worth making before choosing.
This page estimates. It is not payroll, not a contract of employment, and not advice on employment status.
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.
No. On £60,000 with a £1,560 margin, gross pay is £51,246.75, because the umbrella's fee, employer National Insurance and the Apprenticeship Levy come out of the rate first.
Employer National Insurance is the umbrella's liability as your employer, but it is funded from the assignment rate, because the rate is what the client pays for the assignment in total. On this example it is £6,937.01 a year.
It applies where an employer's pay bill has used up the levy allowance, which an umbrella running a large payroll normally has. On this example it is £256.23 a year.
Either gives the same annual take-home. Rolled-up pays the uplift with every invoice; accrued holds it back until you take leave. It is a cash-flow choice, not a question of how much you are paid.
No. It is a planning estimate from published rates. It is not payroll, not employment advice, and not a recommendation about any umbrella company or contract.
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.