After Tax

This page answers one specific question: what will I actually take home? Enter your gross salary and, optionally, a pension percentage and student loan plan, and it gives you a single net pay figure along with the percentage of your salary you keep after all standard deductions.

Four things can reduce your gross pay: income tax, employee National Insurance, a workplace pension contribution, and a student loan repayment if you have one. Income tax and NI apply to almost everyone; the other two only apply if you tell the calculator you have a pension or student loan.

The order matters. A pension contribution taken through a net pay arrangement reduces your taxable income first, which lowers your income tax bill, but it doesn't reduce your NI - NI is always worked out on your unadjusted gross earnings. Student loan repayments come off separately, calculated as 9% (6% for Postgraduate loans) of your income above your plan's threshold, on top of tax and NI, not instead of them.

Take a salary of £52,000 with no pension or student loan. Your £12,570 Personal Allowance leaves £39,430 taxable: £37,700 of that is taxed at 20% (£7,540), and the remaining £1,730 spills into the 40% higher-rate band (£692), for total tax of £8,232. NI is 8% on the £37,700 between £12,570 and £50,270 (£3,016), plus 2% on the £1,730 above £50,270 (£34.60), totalling £3,050.60. All told you keep £40,717.40 of your £52,000 - about £3,393 a month - even though a slice of your income was taxed at 40%.

That £40,717.40 works out at 78.3% of the original £52,000, which is the figure this calculator highlights alongside the pound amount - a quick way to see how deductions change as your salary rises, since the percentage you keep falls gradually as more of your income is taxed at higher rates.

Add any bonus, commission or overtime to the gross figure before calculating, since it's taxed the same way as regular salary over the year, even though it can look heavily taxed in the month it's paid. If your actual tax code differs from the standard 1257L - because of a company benefit, an earlier underpayment, or a second job - your real take-home pay will differ from the estimate here.

This is deliberately the simplest of the site's pay calculators - if you want the fuller breakdown by band, or a comparison across weekly, monthly and annual figures, the salary calculator covers the same ground with more detail.

It's also worth entering a few different salaries if you're weighing up a job offer or a pay rise, rather than just your current figure, so you can see how the percentage you keep changes as you move towards - or across - the £50,270 higher-rate threshold. A rise that looks generous on paper can end up adding noticeably less to your take-home pay once a slice of it falls into the 40% band.