How we calculate your take-home pay
The short version
Every figure follows the HMRC rules for the tax year you pick, and it is worked out in your browser. An automated check re-reads the rates from GOV.UK every week, the tests are worked by hand from the same sources, and the Chrome extension runs exactly the same calculation. Rates last confirmed against GOV.UK: 14 September 2026.
What the calculator works out
- Take-home pay from a salary, or the salary you need for a take-home goal.
- Income Tax for the rest of the UK and for Scotland, including the Personal Allowance and how it is withdrawn above £100,000.
- Employee National Insurance, and the National Insurance your employer adds.
- Student loan repayments on Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5 and the Postgraduate Loan.
- Pension contributions by salary sacrifice, net pay or relief at source, as a percentage or an amount.
- Tax codes, including K codes, flat-rate codes such as BR and D0, NT, and the Scottish and Welsh prefixes.
- Blind Person's Allowance, Marriage Allowance with its eligibility rules, and no employee National Insurance over State Pension age.
- The High Income Child Benefit Charge.
- Overtime, other deductions with their tax treatment, and a one-off bonus month worked out the way payroll deducts it.
- Pay quoted by the year, month, week, day or hour, for the 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27 tax years.
Where the rules come from
Every rate and threshold comes from these pages. The automated check described below reads the ones marked Checked every week again every Monday.
- Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027Checked every week
The Personal Allowance, Income Tax bands for the rest of the UK and Scotland, National Insurance, and every student loan threshold.
How the Personal Allowance is withdrawn above £100,000.
The Scottish bands, used to work the Scottish test figures by hand.
Who pays employee National Insurance, including the exemption over State Pension age.
- Repaying your student loan: which repayment plan you are onChecked every week
Which plan applies, by where and when you studied.
How repayments are taken from pay above each threshold.
How salary sacrifice, net pay and relief at source each give tax relief.
- Workplace pensions: what you, your employer and the government payChecked every week
The auto-enrolment minimum contributions the tax guide quotes.
What each part of a tax code means, including K, flat-rate and emergency codes.
- Blind Person's Allowance: what you'll getChecked every week
The allowance amount.
Who can transfer part of their allowance, and who can receive it.
- Child Benefit: what you'll getChecked every week
The weekly Child Benefit rates behind the High Income Child Benefit Charge.
- High Income Child Benefit ChargeChecked every week
Where the charge starts, how it builds, and where it takes all of it.
- Tax-Free ChildcareChecked every week
The income limit and top-up quoted on the £100,000 tax trap page.
- Free childcare if you are workingChecked every week
The funded hours and income limit quoted on the £100,000 tax trap page.
HMRC's Specification for PAYE Tax Table Routines, which the bonus month follows to the penny.
How the figures are checked
GOV.UK, re-read every week
Every Monday a scheduled job fetches the pages marked above and compares them with the figures the calculator uses for the current tax year: the Personal Allowance, every Income Tax band for the rest of the UK and for Scotland, the National Insurance thresholds and employee rates, each student loan threshold and rate, Blind Person's Allowance, Child Benefit and its charge, and the auto-enrolment minimums. If GOV.UK and the calculator disagree, the job fails and we are alerted. It also fails once the calendar reaches a tax year the calculator does not know, so a new April cannot slip past unnoticed.
Answers worked by hand
The expected answers in the tests are worked out by hand from GOV.UK and HMRC arithmetic, never copied from the calculator's own output: a test built from its own answers would only prove it agrees with itself. They cover every Income Tax band, every student loan plan, the £100,000 taper and all three pension types, for the rest of the UK and for Scotland. The bonus month is worked from HMRC's Specification for PAYE Tax Table Routines, with its band tables checked against the specification's own appendices.
The words match the numbers
The figures written into the text are tied to the same rates. A test reads every page and fails if the band tables in the tax guide stop matching the rates the calculator uses, or if any page still quotes a figure from an earlier tax year.
One calculation, in two places
The Chrome extension badges job listings with the same calculation code as this site, kept identical byte for byte, so a badge on a job advert and the calculator give the same answer.
In real browsers
On every change, each page is loaded in desktop, tablet and mobile browsers and checked for known take-home figures, broken links and accessibility problems.
What it does not work out
It is built for people paid through PAYE by an employer, and some things are left out on purpose. If one of these applies to you, check with HMRC or an adviser.
- Income other than pay from employment: self-employment, dividends, savings interest or rent.
- The pension annual allowance, and its taper for high earners.
- For Scottish taxpayers in a relief-at-source pension, relief above the 20% your provider adds, which you claim back from HMRC.
- National Insurance category letters other than the standard one and the exemption over State Pension age, such as the reduced rate (B) or deferment (J).
- Benefits in kind such as a company car, except through a tax code you enter.
- Pay that changes from one payslip to the next. The figures are yearly, while National Insurance and student loans are worked out each pay period, so an uneven payslip can differ. The bonus month shows the one-off case.
- A bonus month on a flat-rate or K tax code.
- Student loan interest, balances or write-off dates: only the repayments.
- More than one job at once, beyond the tax code you enter for this one.
- Universal Credit and other benefits, apart from the charge on Child Benefit.
- Whether you are a Scottish taxpayer. You choose, and the residency rules are not applied.
- How a week 1 or month 1 tax code spreads tax across payslips. The code is read, and the yearly figures are the same.
- Welsh rates of Income Tax are treated as the rest of the UK's, which they have matched in every year the calculator covers.
Your salary stays in your browser
The calculation runs on your device. Your salary is not sent to us or to anyone else. See the privacy policy for the detail.
Seen a figure that looks wrong?
Email hello@mytakehome.co.uk with the salary and settings, or the link from “Copy link”, and we will check it against GOV.UK and correct it if we are wrong. You can also use the contact form.