Take-home pay in the UK 2026/27: tax, National Insurance and what's left

The three numbers that turn gross pay into take-home pay

Gross pay is the salary written in your contract. Take-home pay – also called net pay – is what actually lands in your bank account after two deductions: Income Tax, collected through PAYE (Pay As You Earn), and employee National Insurance. Both are calculated on the same gross figure, but with different allowances, bands and rates, so they need to be worked out separately rather than as one combined percentage.

There's a third number that never appears on your payslip but still matters: employer National Insurance. It's a cost your employer pays on top of your salary, not a deduction from it – but it's part of what a job actually costs to provide, and it shows up in job adverts and total-compensation statements more often than people expect.

Personal Allowance: the tax-free slice

The standard Personal Allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570 – shown on a payslip as tax code 1257L. Every pound of salary up to that amount is paid with no Income Tax at all. Only the amount above £12,570 is “taxable income” and gets run through the tax bands below.

The allowance isn't fixed for everyone. Above £100,000 of gross income it tapers away by £1 for every £2 earned, and it reaches zero at £125,140 – a mechanic covered in detail in a companion article on the 60% tax trap it creates.

Income Tax bands for 2026/27

These bands apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland sets its own Income Tax bands and rates, which differ from the figures on this page and from the calculator this article links to.

National Insurance: employee and employer

Employee Class 1 National Insurance is charged at 8% on earnings between the £12,570 primary threshold and the £50,270 upper earnings limit, and at 2% on anything above £50,270. Unlike Income Tax there's no equivalent of the Personal Allowance band that grows each year in the same way – the primary threshold has simply been aligned with the Personal Allowance since 2022.

Employers pay a separate 15% National Insurance charge on salary above a £5,000 secondary threshold. This is not deducted from your pay – it's an employment cost on top of gross salary, alongside pension contributions and any other benefits. A £35,000 salary therefore costs an employer £39,500 a year once employer National Insurance is added.

Worked examples across four salaries

Take-home pay doesn't scale in a straight line with gross salary. Between £25,000 and £35,000, gross pay rises by 40% but take-home pay rises by only 33%, because more of the increase falls into taxed bands. Above £50,270, the jump from £50,000 to £70,000 shows this clearly: £20,000 of extra gross salary becomes £11,637.80 of extra take-home pay once 40% Income Tax and 2% National Insurance are applied to nearly all of it.

What this calculation doesn't include

This is the baseline PAYE calculation – Income Tax and National Insurance only, on tax code 1257L. Your actual payslip can differ from these figures for several common reasons.

• Workplace pension contributions, typically 5% of qualifying earnings from the employee under auto-enrolment, come out of gross pay before or after tax depending on the scheme.
• Student loan repayments (Plan 1, 2, 4 or 5, or Postgraduate Loan) are an additional deduction once earnings pass the relevant repayment threshold.
• A different tax code – for example if you have a second job, owe tax from a previous year, or receive benefits in kind – changes how much Personal Allowance is applied through this employment.
• Salary sacrifice arrangements (for pension, cycle-to-work or electric car schemes) reduce the gross salary that Income Tax and National Insurance are calculated on in the first place.

Why the 2026/27 tax year matters

UK tax years run from 6 April to 5 April, so the 2026/27 tax year started on 6 April 2026 and runs to 5 April 2027. The Personal Allowance, tax bands and National Insurance thresholds are set for the whole tax year – they don't move mid-year even if your pay changes, so a payslip in September 2026 uses the same rates as one in April 2026.

Thresholds are set separately each tax year in the Budget or a fiscal statement, and several – including the Personal Allowance, the basic-rate limit and the additional-rate threshold – have been held at the same cash value since 2021/22 rather than rising with inflation. That freeze is a major reason more people move into higher tax bands over time without a real change in their circumstances, an effect known as fiscal drag.