How is my take-home pay calculated?

Your take-home pay is your gross salary minus Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan repayments, and pension contributions. The calculator uses HMRC published rates for the 2025/26 tax year and applies the correct tax bands, personal allowance (£12,570), and NI thresholds automatically.

What tax code should I use?

Most employees have tax code 1257L, which gives the standard Personal Allowance of £12,570. You can find your tax code on your payslip, P45, P60, or HMRC online account. If you enter a tax code in the advanced settings, the calculator will adjust your Personal Allowance accordingly.

Which student loan plan am I on?

Plan 1: courses starting before September 2012 (England/Wales) or any time in Scotland/Northern Ireland. Plan 2: courses starting September 2012 onwards (England/Wales). Plan 4: Scotland only. Plan 5: courses starting August 2023 onwards (England/Wales). Postgraduate: Master's or Doctoral loans.

What's the difference between salary sacrifice and relief at source?

Salary sacrifice: your employer deducts pension before calculating tax and NI, so you save on both. Relief at source: pension is deducted from your net pay, and your provider claims basic rate tax relief (20%) from HMRC. Net pay: deducted before tax but after NI. Salary sacrifice typically saves you the most.

Why does my take-home drop sharply between £100k and £125k?

For every £2 you earn over £100,000, you lose £1 of your Personal Allowance. This creates an effective marginal tax rate of 60% in the £100,000–£125,140 range. The calculator's raise insight feature warns you when you're in this zone.

How accurate is this calculator?

The calculator uses the official HMRC rates and thresholds for the 2025/26 tax year. It provides accurate estimates for employed (PAYE) workers but does not account for benefits in kind, multiple employments, or self-employed income. Always verify with HMRC or a qualified tax adviser.

Does this calculator work for self-employed income?

No, this calculator is designed for employed (PAYE) workers. Self-employed individuals pay Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance at different rates, and tax is collected through Self Assessment rather than PAYE. HMRC provides a separate self-employed tax calculator.

How is employer NI calculated?

For 2025/26, employers pay 15% National Insurance on earnings above the secondary threshold of £5,000 per year. There is no upper limit — employer NI applies to all earnings above the threshold. You can view the employer cost by clicking 'Show employer cost' on your payslip.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 2026

Overview

myTakeHome is a free UK salary calculator available as a website and a Chrome browser extension. We are committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains how we handle your data. In short, we don't collect any.

Data Collection

myTakeHome does not collect, store, transmit, or process any personal data. Specifically:

No personal information is collected (name, email, IP address, etc.)
No salary or financial data is sent to any server
No usage analytics or tracking scripts are loaded
No cookies are set
No third-party advertising or marketing tools are used
No user accounts or registration are required

How Calculations Work

All tax calculations run entirely in your browser using JavaScript. The salary figures you enter never leave your device. No data is transmitted to our servers or any third party.

Tax rates and thresholds are based on HMRC published rates and are bundled directly into the application code.

Browser Extension

The myTakeHome browser extension operates under the same privacy principles:

Permissions: The extension requires access to supported job board websites (Indeed, Reed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, TotalJobs) solely to detect salary information displayed on the page and inject take-home pay badges. It also uses Chrome's storage API to save your settings (tax region, student loan plan, pension percentage).
Local processing: All salary detection and tax calculations happen locally in your browser.
No network requests: The extension makes no network requests. It does not phone home, send analytics, or communicate with any external server.
Settings storage: Your preferences (tax year, region, student loan plan, pension contribution, enabled sites) are stored locally using Chrome's sync storage API. This data syncs across your Chrome browsers if you are signed into Chrome, but is never accessible to us or any third party.

Local Storage (Website)

The website uses your browser's localStorage to remember your last-entered salary and settings between visits. This data is stored entirely on your device, is never transmitted, and can be cleared at any time through your browser settings.

Third-Party Services

myTakeHome does not use any third-party services that collect user data. There are no:

Analytics services (no Google Analytics, Mixpanel, etc.)
Advertising networks
Social media tracking pixels
Customer data platforms
Error reporting services that capture user data

External Links

This site contains links to official UK government resources (gov.uk) for reference. These external sites have their own privacy policies, which we encourage you to review.

Children's Privacy

myTakeHome is a general-purpose calculator tool. We do not knowingly collect any data from anyone, including children under the age of 13.

Contact Form

If you use our contact form, we collect the information you voluntarily provide: your name, email address, category selection, and message. This data is:

Processed by Netlify — submissions are handled by Netlify under their privacy policy
Used solely to respond to your enquiry
Deleted after resolution of the enquiry
Never used for marketing or shared with third parties

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected on this page with an updated date. Since we do not collect any data, changes are unlikely to affect you.

Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, please reach out via our contact form or email us at hello@mytakehome.co.uk.

Back to myTakeHome