Salary after tax calculator
Enter your gross salary to see a breakdown of income tax, National Insurance, and student loan deductions — and your resulting take-home pay. Covers 2025/26 UK tax thresholds.
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Enter your gross salary to see a breakdown of income tax, National Insurance, and student loan deductions — and your resulting take-home pay. Covers 2025/26 UK tax thresholds.
Your gross salary is the amount your employer agrees to pay you before any deductions. What you actually receive in your bank account — your take-home pay — is lower because HMRC takes income tax and National Insurance contributions before the money reaches you.
For the 2025/26 tax year, the personal allowance is £12,570. Earnings above that are taxed at 20% up to £50,270, 40% up to £125,140, and 45% above that. National Insurance adds a further 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% above. On a £40,000 salary that means roughly £6,486 in income tax and £2,194 in NI — leaving you around £31,320 per year, or £2,610 per month before any other deductions.
Enter your gross annual salary, any pension sacrifice percentage (contributions made before tax), and your student loan plan if applicable. Click Calculate to see a full breakdown of each deduction and your resulting annual and monthly take-home pay.
The calculator uses 2025/26 HMRC thresholds, which are frozen until April 2028 under the current government policy. Rates are for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland — Scottish income tax has different bands and is not modelled here.
Salary sacrifice reduces your contractual pay before tax and NI are calculated. If your employer offers it and you contribute to a workplace pension this way, you only pay income tax and NI on your reduced salary — meaning every £100 contributed costs you less than £100 in take-home pay. The saving depends on your marginal tax rate: for a higher-rate taxpayer it's around £41 net cost per £100 contributed, versus £68 for a basic-rate taxpayer.
This calculator models employee-side deductions only. Employer NI, employers' pension contributions, benefit-in-kind taxes, and other payroll deductions (e.g. cycle-to-work scheme, childcare vouchers) are not included. The income tax calculation uses HMRC's standard England/Wales/NI bands for 2025/26. Student loan repayment thresholds use 2025/26 values from the Student Loans Company.
The figures are projections for planning purposes only and may differ from your actual payslip, which reflects cumulative pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) adjustments throughout the tax year.
Your take-home pay is your gross salary minus income tax, National Insurance contributions, and any student loan repayments. If you make pension contributions via salary sacrifice, those are deducted from your gross first, which also reduces the taxable base for income tax and NI. This calculator applies 2025/26 HMRC thresholds: a personal allowance of £12,570, basic rate at 20% up to £50,270, higher rate at 40% up to £125,140, and additional rate at 45% above that.
Three main deductions reduce gross salary to net pay: income tax (applied to earnings above the personal allowance using the banded rates), National Insurance (employee primary contributions at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above), and student loan repayments (if applicable, at 9% above the plan threshold for Plan 1, 2, 4 and 5; 6% above the postgraduate threshold). Employer pension contributions and any voluntary deductions are not included in this calculation.
Yes. Salary sacrifice (also called salary exchange) reduces your contractual gross pay before tax and National Insurance are calculated. That means you pay income tax and NI only on the reduced amount, which can result in significant savings — especially if the sacrifice keeps you below the 40% higher-rate threshold or below the £100,000 personal allowance taper. This calculator models the tax and NI benefit of sacrifice; the pension pot itself is not included in the take-home figure.
Your plan depends on when and where you studied. Plan 1 applies to most UK students who started before September 2012 (England and Wales) or before September 1998 (Scotland and Northern Ireland). Plan 2 applies to English and Welsh students who started on or after 1 September 2012 (and graduated before 2023 cohort cut-off). Plan 4 applies to Scottish students who started on or after 1 September 1998. Plan 5 applies to English students who started from August 2023 onwards. Postgraduate loans cover Master's and Doctoral loans taken out from August 2016. If you have both an undergraduate and a postgraduate loan, repayments run concurrently. Check your loan type on the Student Loans Company portal or your payslip.
Have a student loan? See how repayments reduce your take-home with our student loan repayment calculator. Wondering how much to put into your pension? The pension calculator projects your pot with salary sacrifice, employer contributions, and tax relief. To see how regular savings compound over time, use the compound interest calculator, or shelter growth from tax with the ISA calculator.
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