United Kingdom · 2026/27
Take-home pay calculator
Salary or hourly rate, either UK income tax regime, student loans and salary sacrifice. It shows the marginal rate on your next £100 and what the job costs your employer — not just the total at the bottom.
Your result
- Take-home a year
- £35,919.60
- £2,993.30 a month · £690.76 a week
- Total deductions
- £9,080.40
- 20.2% of gross pay
- On your next £100
- 28%
- You keep £72 of the next £100
- Cost to employ you
- £51,000
- Includes £6,000 of employer NI absent from your payslip
- The wedge
- 29.6%
- Share of that cost that never reaches you
- Take-home £35,919.60 70.4%
- Your NI £2,594.40 5.1%
- Income tax £6,486 12.7%
- Employer NI £6,000 11.8%
| Period | Gross | Deductions | Take-home |
|---|---|---|---|
| A year | £45,000 | £9,080.40 | £35,919.60 |
| A month | £3,750 | £756.70 | £2,993.30 |
| Four-weekly | £3,461.54 | £698.49 | £2,763.05 |
| Fortnightly | £1,730.77 | £349.25 | £1,381.52 |
| A week | £865.38 | £174.62 | £690.76 |
| An hour (37.5h week) | £23.08 | £4.66 | £18.42 |
A four-weekly payroll pays £2,763.05 thirteen times a year rather than £2,993.30 twelve times — the same annual total, arriving in smaller and more frequent amounts. Hourly assumes 37.5 paid hours a week for 52 weeks.
Where £45,000 sits
The calculator answers for whatever figure you type. This is the worked position for the figure it starts on, so the page is a complete answer before you touch anything — and so that what the thresholds actually do is legible rather than merely implied by a number changing.
£45,000 sits between two things that matter. £11,205 below you is the Plan 4 (Scotland) repayment threshold, and £5,270 above you is the National Insurance upper earnings limit — so this salary is already past one change and approaching another.
| What changes | At | From here | |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Insurance upper earnings limit | £50,270 | +£5,270 | ahead |
| Higher rate | £50,271 | +£5,271 | ahead |
| Plan 4 (Scotland) repayment threshold | £33,795 | −£11,205 | passed |
Measured against the 2026/27 parameters for England, Wales & Northern Ireland. Distances are on gross pay before any salary sacrifice, because that is the figure every one of these thresholds is tested against.
- £50,270 — Above it your own National Insurance falls from 8% to 2%. That is £5,270 away, and it is the reason the higher rate stings less at the margin than the headline jump suggests.
- £50,271 — Crossing it does not re-tax what you already earn — only the pounds above it move to the higher rate, which is the single most misunderstood thing about UK income tax.
- £33,795 — Plan 4 (Scotland) takes 9% of the £11,205 above its threshold. It is not a tax, but it leaves the same pay on the same day.
What a ten per cent move would do
A swing of ten per cent either way from £45,000 does not cross a single band: the rate on further pay stays at 28% across the whole range from £40,500 to £49,500. That makes this an unusually predictable place to be paid, and it means the arithmetic below scales — a rise of any size in that range is worth the same proportion in your hand.
| If pay moved | Gross | Take-home | Change | Next £100 taxed at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| −10% | £40,500 | £32,679.60 | −£3,240 | 28% |
| −5% | £42,750 | £34,299.60 | −£1,620 | 28% |
| +5% | £47,250 | £37,539.60 | +£1,620 | 28% |
| +10% | £49,500 | £39,159.60 | +£3,240 | 28% |
And with a student loan
Every one of the five repayment thresholds is behind this salary, so whichever plan you are on, you are repaying. Which plan you are on is not a choice, and the difference between them at this salary is £431.55 a year, so it is worth knowing which one your payslip is deducting.
| Plan | Starts at | Repaid a year | A month | Your next £100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postgraduate Loan | £21,000 | £1,440 | £120 | 34% |
| Plan 5 | £25,000 | £1,800 | £150 | 37% |
| Plan 1 | £26,900 | £1,629 | £135.75 | 37% |
| Plan 2 | £29,385 | £1,405.35 | £117.11 | 37% |
| Plan 4 (Scotland) | £33,795 | £1,008.45 | £84.04 | 37% |
A postgraduate loan is repaid alongside an undergraduate one rather than instead of it, so someone with both pays both.
The arithmetic behind it
| Step | Applied to | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross pay | — | — | £45,000 |
| Personal allowance | tax-free | 0% | −£12,570 |
| Taxable income | — | — | £32,430 |
| Basic rate | £32,430 of it | 20% | £6,486 |
| Income tax | — | — | £6,486 |
| National Insurance — main rate | £32,430 of it | 8% | £2,594.40 |
| National Insurance | — | — | £2,594.40 |
| Take-home pay | — | — | £35,919.60 |
Adding the deductions gives £9,080.40, and £45,000 less that is the £35,919.60 take-home above. National Insurance is charged per pay period rather than annually, so a month containing a bonus can pay more than this.
Questions people actually ask
Is this calculator accurate?
It computes income tax, employee and employer National Insurance and student loan repayment exactly as the published 2026/27 rules define them, and the arithmetic is checked on every build against figures worked by hand from the GOV.UK tables. What it does not model is anything outside a standard single-employment PAYE case: benefits in kind, a non-standard tax code, several jobs at once, or income that is not employment income. Those are listed under every result.
Why does it show what my employer pays?
Because it is part of what you cost, and it is the part no payslip shows. Employer National Insurance is 15% of everything you earn above £5,000, paid on top of your salary. At £45,000 that is £6,000 a year. Leaving it out makes the tax burden look about a third smaller than it is.
What is salary sacrifice and why does it help so much?
You agree to a lower salary and your employer pays the difference into your pension. Because your contractual pay is genuinely lower, it reduces income tax and National Insurance — both sides of it. A personal pension contribution gets you income tax relief but not the NI saving, which is why sacrifice is worth more. In the 62% band between £100,000 and £125,140 it is worth most of all, because relief is given at the marginal rate.
What this calculation assumes
- 2026/27 rates for England, Wales & Northern Ireland.
- One employment, paid through payroll, taxed on the standard code with no adjustments carried in.
- Employment income only — no dividends, savings interest, rental or self-employment income.
- No taxable benefits in kind, no company car, no unpaid leave.
- National Insurance category A: the standard case for an employee over 21 and under State Pension age.
- Income Tax is annual, but National Insurance is charged per pay period — a large one-off bonus can pay more NI than this annual view shows.
- No student or postgraduate loan repayment.
- No salary sacrifice and no workplace pension contribution.