Income Tax & Salary Calculators UK 2026/27
Five free tools covering every stage of the salary-to-benefits picture: from gross pay to net income, tax codes, salary sacrifice, minimum wage, and the critical point where a pay rise starts to reduce your entitlements.
Take-Home Pay Calculator
Enter your annual or hourly salary and get a precise monthly and weekly net figure after Income Tax and National Insurance for 2026/27. Covers all tax codes, Scottish rates, and pension contributions.
Calculate take-home pay →Tax Code Checker
Decode your PAYE tax code (1257L, K codes, BR, D0, NT and others) and find out if HMRC has you on the wrong code — a common cause of overpaying or underpaying tax.
Check my tax code →Salary Sacrifice Calculator
Model the net cost of sacrificing salary into a pension, cycle-to-work scheme, or electric car. Because sacrifice reduces your taxable pay, the actual cost is lower than the headline figure — often significantly so.
Model salary sacrifice →Minimum Wage Calculator
Convert the 2026 National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage rates into weekly, monthly, and annual take-home figures for any contracted hours. Essential context for UC claimants subject to the Minimum Income Floor.
Convert NLW to net pay →Benefits Cliff Calculator
The tool no other salary site offers: enter your current earnings and benefit awards, then see exactly how a pay rise, extra hours, or a promotion changes your total household income — including UC taper, Council Tax Reduction, and Child Benefit HIBC.
Find my benefits cliff →Why Gross Salary and Net Income Are Two Very Different Numbers in 2026
A job advertised at £35,000 a year does not pay £35,000 a year. After Income Tax and National Insurance contributions — and before any salary sacrifice, student loan repayments, or pension deductions — a worker on that salary in England takes home approximately £27,500 net in 2026/27. That is a gap of £7,500, or 21.4%, that many employees never fully account for when budgeting or assessing whether a pay rise is worthwhile.
For households receiving means-tested benefits, the gap is even wider. The Universal Credit taper removes 55p of benefit for every £1 earned above the work allowance. Council Tax Reduction is phased out as income rises. The High Income Child Benefit Charge kicks in at £60,000. In combination, marginal effective tax rates for some low-to-middle income households in the UK exceed 70% — higher than the top rate of Income Tax.
The UK operates a progressive marginal rate system — you pay each rate only on the slice of income that falls within that band, not on your entire salary. This means a higher-rate taxpayer still pays 0% on the first £12,570 and 20% on earnings between £12,571 and £50,270.
| Band | Taxable income (England & Wales) | Income Tax rate | NI rate (employee) | Combined marginal rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | Up to £12,570 | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Basic | £12,571 – £50,270 | 20% | 8% | 28% |
| Higher | £50,271 – £125,140 | 40% | 2% | 42% |
| PA taper | £100,000 – £125,140 | 60% effective | 2% | 62% effective |
| Additional | Over £125,140 | 45% | 2% | 47% |
Between £100,000 and £125,140, every additional £2 of income causes the Personal Allowance to shrink by £1. The result: you pay 40% on the new income plus 40% on the £1 of allowance lost — effectively a 60% marginal rate on that slice, plus 2% NI, making the combined rate 62%. This is one of the most overlooked features of the UK tax system, and it makes salary sacrifice into a pension particularly valuable for earners in this range. Use the Salary Sacrifice Calculator to model the exact saving.
This is the most analytically important concept this section covers, and one that standard salary calculators ignore entirely.
Consider a single parent earning £1,200/month net with one child, paying £800/month rent. Her UC award (Band C property, outside London) is approximately £1,060/month. Total household income: £2,260/month. If she takes a promotion to £1,600/month net, the UC award drops by £220 (55% taper on the extra £400). She also loses eligibility for maximum Council Tax Reduction, adding perhaps £80/month in council tax. Total household income after the pay rise: approximately £2,300 — a gain of just £40 on a £400 gross earnings increase. Her marginal effective tax rate across that earnings increment is approximately 90%.
This is not a hypothetical edge case. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that over 1.5 million UK workers face marginal effective tax rates above 60% due to benefit withdrawal interactions. The Benefits Cliff Calculator maps this precisely for your household.
Salary sacrifice is a contractual arrangement where you give up part of your gross salary in exchange for a non-cash benefit — typically employer pension contributions, a cycle-to-work loan, or an electric car via a company scheme. Because the sacrifice reduces your contractual salary, you pay less Income Tax and National Insurance on that amount. Your employer also pays less Employer NI (13.8%), and many pass some or all of that saving back to the employee.
At the basic rate, sacrificing £1,000 into a pension costs the employee approximately £720 in lost take-home pay — the remaining £280 comes from reduced tax and NI. At the higher rate, a £1,000 sacrifice costs approximately £580. For earners between £100,000 and £125,140, pension sacrifice is even more powerful: restoring the Personal Allowance effectively means a £1,000 sacrifice can be worth up to £620 in combined tax savings.
There is a ceiling: the Annual Allowance for pension contributions is £60,000 for 2026/27 (or 100% of earnings if lower). Use the Salary Sacrifice Calculator to see the exact net cost at your salary and tax band.
Your tax code tells your employer how much tax-free income to allow before deducting PAYE. The standard code for 2026/27 is 1257L — representing the £12,570 Personal Allowance (drop the last digit). But HMRC issues hundreds of variants, and errors are common.
Use the Tax Code Checker to decode yours fully and find out whether HMRC's calculation of your allowance is correct.
Income Tax calculators and benefits calculators are usually built in silos. In practice, they interact constantly. Here is how changes to earned income ripple across the benefits you may receive:
| Parameter | 2025/26 | 2026/27 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Allowance | £12,570 | £12,570 | Frozen (5th year) |
| Basic Rate threshold | £50,270 | £50,270 | Frozen |
| National Living Wage (21+) | £11.44/hr | £12.21/hr | +6.7% |
| UC Standard Allowance (single 25+) | £393.45/mo | £400.14/mo | +1.7% |
| NI primary rate | 8% | 8% | No change |
| Child Benefit (eldest child) | £25.60/wk | £26.05/wk | +1.7% |
| Pension Annual Allowance | £60,000 | £60,000 | No change |
| High Income Child Benefit threshold | £60,000 | £60,000 | No change |
The dominant theme of 2026/27 is the continued fiscal drag from frozen thresholds alongside rising nominal wages. The National Living Wage rose 6.7%, which means more workers now pay Income Tax and NI on a larger slice of their earnings than in 2025 — even without a pay rise in real terms. For NLW workers, the tax burden increased by approximately £185/year in 2026/27 compared to 2025/26, despite no changes to rates or thresholds.