A £600 week on the standard code leaves about £499.68 after Income Tax and National Insurance. Weekly thresholds, week 53 and W1 explained.
Weekly pay is taxed on the annual Income Tax figures split 52 ways: each payday carries one fifty-second of the free pay your tax code allows and one fifty-second of each band. A £600 week on the standard code leaves about £499.68 after Income Tax and National Insurance. Enter your own weekly gross figure below. It is annualised over 52 weeks, then Income Tax and National Insurance are estimated from that annual total.
Enter your weekly gross pay. It is annualised over 52 weeks and taxed on that basis.
Of £31,200.00 gross a year: Income Tax £3,726.00, National Insurance £1,490.40, Take-home £25,983.60.
Saving £110 a month — about 5% of this take-home — becomes £7,279.69 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 weekly pay, using the values below. Open the calculator if your example salary differs.
Splitting the allowance and the bands 52 ways is what makes a full year of steady weekly pay arrive at the right annual tax with no year-end sum. On the standard code one week of free pay is £241.73 and one week of the basic-rate band is £725, which are the 2026/27 annual figures divided by 52. HMRC's pay adjustment tables state free pay to the penny, so the figure payroll uses can sit a penny either side of a plain division.
National Insurance has its own weekly thresholds, published beside the monthly and yearly ones in GOV.UK's rates and thresholds table for employers, and they are set in whole pounds a week. A weekly National Insurance threshold multiplied by 52 need not return the yearly figure printed next to it. National Insurance is also charged on each pay period on its own rather than cumulatively, so two people on the same annual gross can pay different amounts if one has uneven weeks. This page annualises first, so its National Insurance figure is an annual estimate rather than a week-by-week one.
On a cumulative code, payroll totals pay to date and free pay to date at every payday, works out the tax due for the year so far, and deducts only what has not already been taken. Allowance unused in an earlier week is still available later. A code ending W1 works out tax from that week's pay alone: no running totals, no allowance carried forward. GOV.UK describes the effect as being taxed as though you were paid that amount every week of the year. W1 is the weekly emergency marker, M1 the monthly one, X where pay dates vary.
Take the weekly figure this page starts with, £600, and a £2,000 bonus paid in week 30, so that payday grosses £2,600. A cumulative code measures it against the year to date: pay to that point is still inside the basic-rate band, so the week's Income Tax is £471.65. A W1 code measures the same payday on its own, so one week of the basic-rate band is used up and the rest of that week's taxable pay meets the higher rate, giving £798.31. The difference of £326.66 is not a different tax bill for the year; it is money held back because one week was read as though every week looked like it.
No tax was deducted on pay that did not happen, so there is nothing on it to give back. What changes on a cumulative code is that week's own deduction, worked out against the free pay accrued to that point, so it falls by the basic rate on the pay that is missing. Where the weeks before it were steady, that deduction turns into an actual refund only if the week's gross drops below one week of free pay, £241.73, and the refund is then the basic rate on the difference, which is pennies at most weekly pay levels. A refund can also arrive on a cumulative code for an unrelated reason, such as a coding notice that raises the allowance partway through the year. On W1 there is no refund at any level: the week's tax stops at nil and the unused part of that week's allowance is not carried into the next week.
The tax year runs 6 April to 5 April: 365 days, one more than 52 whole weeks, and 366 in a leap year. That leftover day gives one payday weekday 53 paydays instead of 52. In 2026/27 the tax year ends on a Monday, so Monday pay dates are the ones that can carry a 53rd payday, and a tax year containing 29 February gives two weekdays an extra one. HMRC's employer guide CWG2 tells payroll to work that payday from the week 1 table, so an extra week of free pay is given and the year's free pay ends up above the annual allowance. HMRC may afterwards tell the employee that not enough tax was paid. Fortnightly pay produces a week 54 and four-weekly pay a week 56 on the same reasoning.
CWG2 also tells the employer not to change the tax code to a week 1 basis where the week 1 table was used only to work out a week 53 payment. A payslip showing a 53rd weekly payday is therefore not evidence that the code itself has stopped being cumulative, and it is not the same event as being moved onto a W1 code.
This page annualises weekly gross over 52 weeks, so the figure is a smooth full-year estimate. A W1, M1 or X suffix typed into the tax code box is recognised and stripped, but the non-cumulative calculation behind it is not run and nothing on screen says so. No 53rd week is added, National Insurance is estimated annually rather than week by week, and there is no pension or student loan input here. This page estimates; it does not decide what your payroll must deduct.
This estimate is worked out on £31,200 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 a cumulative code the same annual gross gives the same Income Tax whether it arrives in 12 payments or 52. What differs is timing: a weekly payslip settles the year in smaller steps, so a change in pay reaches the next deduction sooner than it would monthly. National Insurance is the part that can genuinely differ between the two patterns.
Look at the tax code on your payslip. If it ends W1, M1 or X, payroll is treating that pay period on its own. The same code appears in your personal tax account and on a coding notice. It is often temporary: once HMRC holds your full pay details it usually issues a cumulative code.
Only if the code changes. While W1, M1 or X stays on it, every payday is worked out alone, so too much taken in one week is not returned in a later one. It is settled when HMRC issues a cumulative code, which re-checks the year to date on the next payday, or after 5 April when HMRC reconciles the year.
A P60 totals what was actually paid across the tax year. Some years carry 53 weekly paydays. Overtime, arrears, unpaid weeks and a pay rise partway through all move individual weeks, and pension deductions change the taxable figure reported. Multiplying one week by 52 assumes none of that happened.
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.