Nothing comes off your first pound

Your gross salary isn't taxed all at once. Deductions occur in a strict, step-by-step order—and understanding that order is the key to spot-checking your payslip.

Three main things come off — Income Tax, National Insurance, and a student loan repayment if you have one. Each of them ignores the other.

Income Tax

The Personal Allowance is yours before anything is taxed

The good news! Everyone gets a slice of income each year that isn't taxed at all.

After your Personal Allowance, Income Tax bands kick in

Income Tax is charged in bands — one rate on the next slice of your pay above the Personal Allowance, and higher rates on the slices after that.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2026/27:

Between £100,000 and £125,140 the Personal Allowance is taken away at £1 for every £2 you earn, so by £125,140 there is none of it left. That is the reason the higher-rate band runs so much further than most people expect, and it is why a pound earned at £110,000 is worth less to you than a pound earned at £130,000.

This is the one most people have backwards, and it's worth being clear about, because it changes how a pay rise feels. A rise that takes you over a threshold doesn't suddenly re-tax everything underneath it. The pounds below the line carry on being taxed exactly as they were. You keep less of the pounds above the line than the pounds below it, and that's the whole of it.

So a rise always leaves you with more. It just leaves you with less more than the headline suggests.

National Insurance runs on its own thresholds

It is a separate sum, not a slice of your income tax.

National Insurance has its own thresholds. They sit close to income tax's, but they're not the same thing and they don't have to move together. Below the first one you pay nothing. Above it a percentage applies, and above a second, higher threshold that percentage drops.

Scotland charges income tax differently

Same salary, different bill, depending on which side of the border you're on.

Scotland sets its own bands and rates, and there are more of them — six where the rest of the UK has three. England, Wales and Northern Ireland are charged the same as each other. Your student loan and your National Insurance don't change.

Scotland, 2026/27:

The Personal Allowance and the way it tapers away over £100,000 are the same in Scotland as everywhere else — those are set at Westminster, not at Holyrood.

Three different governments set those numbers, and none of them is locked to a timetable

The rates above are decided once a year, in different places, and nothing in law says they have to wait for a Budget.

England and Northern Ireland take the rates Westminster sets. Since 2017 the Treasury's own policy has been that there should be one fiscal event a year and that it should be in the autumn, so an Autumn Budget is where a change would normally be announced. That is a policy, not a rule — and the power to collect income tax at all has to be renewed every year in the Finance Bill.

Scotland sets its own bands and rates at the Scottish Budget, which for this tax year was in January. Holyrood has used that freedom: six bands against three, and a top rate three points higher.

Wales is the one worth knowing about, because it looks like England and isn't quite. Since April 2019 the UK rates have been cut by 10p in every band for Welsh taxpayers, and the Welsh Government decides what to add back. It has chosen 10p every year since — including for 2026/27 — so Wales matches England and Northern Ireland by choice rather than by law, and could stop matching at a future Welsh Budget without anything in Westminster changing.

So the honest position is that these numbers are right for 2026/27 and I can't promise anything about the year after. When they move, this page moves with them.

Your student loan is judged on each payslip, not on your year

It looks at what you earned this month, and nothing else.

Income tax spreads your allowance evenly across the year and keeps a running total. Your student loan does neither. Each payslip is judged on its own, against that period's threshold, with no memory of the ones before it.

That one difference explains most of the odd things a student loan does on a payslip, and your student loan and your payslip is the page about it.

Where this breaks down

The first line of this page assumes your tax code is the normal one.

If you're on an emergency code, or a code that has been adjusted because of a second job, a company benefit or an underpayment from an earlier year, tax can start earlier than the Personal Allowance suggests — sometimes at the first pound. The code on your payslip is what settles it, and the calculator here assumes the standard one.

Pension contributions, salary sacrifice and bonuses all move these numbers too, and the calculator now handles all three — pensions especially, because the same contribution costs you different amounts depending on how your employer runs it.

So where does that leave your own payslip?

The calculator on the take-home pay home page works the whole thing out on your own salary, and shows you each deduction separately so you can check it against a real payslip rather than take my word for it.

I can't tell you what to do about your own pay. I don't know your situation, and this is information rather than advice.

2026/27 tax year, from GOV.UK and the Scottish Government. What this calculator assumes and doesn't handle.