Privacy

The calculator

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no server-side calculation and no API call — the figures are computed by a JavaScript file your browser downloaded, using parameters from a static JSON file. Nothing you type is transmitted, logged or stored. You can confirm this in your browser's network panel: moving the sliders produces no requests.

The salary you enter is written into the page's own URL so the result can be bookmarked or shared. That URL stays in your browser unless you copy it somewhere yourself.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies of its own and there is no advertising, so no advertising cookies are set either. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.

Analytics

No analytics script is loaded. Access logs kept by the hosting provider record the usual request metadata — IP address, time, path, user agent — and are used only for operating the site.

Contact

hello@taxwedge.com

The short version

This site does not collect anything about you. There are no cookies, no analytics, no tag manager, no pixels, no fingerprinting, no A/B testing, no session recording, no embedded fonts from a third party, and no account to create. Nothing you type into a calculator is transmitted anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be transmitted to: the arithmetic runs in your browser, in a file the page already downloaded.

That is unusual enough that it is worth explaining how it is possible, because "we respect your privacy" is a sentence every site says and almost none can demonstrate.

Why there is nothing to collect

TaxWedge is a static site. Every page you see was generated once, in advance, and written to a file. When you load a page, a web server sends you that file. There is no application server, no database, and no code running on our side that could receive a salary figure even if it wanted to. When you type into the calculator, JavaScript already in your browser reads the tax parameters from a small data file and does the multiplication locally. The result never leaves the machine you are sitting at.

You can verify this rather than take it on faith. Open your browser's developer tools, go to the network tab, and type a salary into any calculator on this site. You will see no requests at all. The only request the calculator ever makes is for the rates file itself, once, when the page loads — and that file contains published tax thresholds, not anything about you.

What the share link does

Several pages offer a link that reproduces the figure you calculated. That link encodes your figure in the address bar, in the part of the URL after the question mark. Two things follow from that, and both matter. First, the figure is genuinely in the link, so if you send it to someone they will see the salary you entered — that is the point of the feature, but it is worth knowing before you paste it into a group chat. Second, the part of a URL after the question mark is sent to the server when the page is loaded, in the same way the rest of the address is, so a shared link is no longer purely local. If you would rather it were not, do not use the share button; the calculator works identically without it.

Server logs

The site is served by a content delivery network, which like any web server records the fact that a request happened: an IP address, a timestamp, the page requested, and the user agent string your browser sends. This is the ordinary technical record that makes it possible to serve a website and to notice when one is being attacked. It is not linked to anything else, it is not used to build a profile, it is not sold, and it is not read except when something is broken. Retention is whatever the provider's default is; there is no separate archive of it here.

Advertising

There is no advertising on this site at present, and no advertising script is loaded. The page templates contain reserved spaces where advertising could go, and those spaces render as nothing at all — they are marked as hidden from assistive technology and take up no height. If advertising is ever switched on, it will be disclosed on /disclosure/ and this page will be updated to describe exactly what the advertising provider collects, before rather than after the change. Any such change is logged with a date on /changes/.

Email

If you write to contact@taxwedge.com or corrections@taxwedge.com, that email is received and read like any other email, and kept for as long as it is useful to keep. It is not added to a list, because there is no list. Corrections that result in a change to the site are published on /changes/ without naming the person who sent them, unless they ask to be named.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over personal data held about you. In practice this site holds none, so a request would be answered by saying so — except in the case of email correspondence, where the request would be honoured in the ordinary way. Enquiries to contact@taxwedge.com. If you are unhappy with the response you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

The site is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone, so no special provision applies. A student checking what a part-time hourly rate leaves after tax is a perfectly ordinary reader.

Changes to this notice

Material changes are recorded on /changes/ with a date. Because this notice describes a technical fact about how the site is built rather than a policy choice, it will only change if that fact changes.

What "no cookies" means precisely

The site sets no cookies of its own and loads no script that sets one. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to, which is the correct outcome under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations rather than an omission: a banner is required when non-essential storage is used, and none is.

One small exception is worth stating because it is technically browser storage. Some pages remember a panel you opened, using the browser's own local storage. That value never leaves your device, is not readable by this site's operators, is not an identifier, and clearing your browser data removes it. It exists so that a disclosure you expanded stays expanded, and nothing else.

Third parties, listed exhaustively

The pages load no fonts, scripts, stylesheets, images or frames from any other host. Everything is served from this site's own domain. That is checkable in a browser's network tab in about ten seconds, and it is the reason the privacy position can be stated as a fact about the build rather than a promise about behaviour.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Both signals are honoured trivially, because there is nothing to opt out of: no tracking is performed whether or not a signal is sent. If advertising is ever introduced, the handling of these signals will be described here before the change rather than after it.

Why this notice is short

Most privacy notices are long because they describe many arrangements: analytics providers, advertising partners, embedded content, session storage, marketing lists. This one is short because none of those exist. If it ever gets longer, that will be because something was added, and the addition will be logged with a date at /changes/ before it takes effect rather than after.

What a request to us would actually return

It is worth spelling out what "we hold nothing" means in practice, because the phrase is used loosely elsewhere. If you asked what personal data this site holds about you, the answer would be: no account, because there are none; no profile, because nothing is tracked; no calculation history, because figures never leave your browser; no email address, unless you have written to us, in which case the correspondence itself is the only record and can be deleted on request. There is no analytics store to search, no advertising identifier to look up, and no third party to forward the request to.

The browser extension

TaxWedge also publishes a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox that shows take-home pay, the rate on your next £100 and the employer's cost on job listings. It collects nothing, and the technical facts behind that are the same ones above, plus three specific to an extension.

It asks for one permission: storage. That is used to remember the settings you choose in its own panel — where you live, hours a week, salary sacrifice, student loan plan. Those values are held by your browser on your own device. They are not an identifier, they are not readable by this site, and clearing your browser data removes them.

It runs on five sites and no others. Indeed, LinkedIn, Reed, Glassdoor and TotalJobs. It has no permission to read any other page, and it does not request one. On those pages it reads only the text already displayed, in order to find a salary; it does not read your account, your applications, your messages or anything behind a login.

It makes no network requests at all. The tax engine, the rates and the arithmetic are inside the extension package, so there is no server for it to talk to. This is checked mechanically rather than promised: the build refuses to produce a package if any shipped file contains fetch to a remote address, XMLHttpRequest, sendBeacon, a WebSocket, or a remote dynamic import, and it refuses any permission other than storage.

Nothing about the salaries you look at, the jobs you view, or the settings you choose is transmitted, logged or seen by anyone. There is no analytics in the extension, no crash reporting, and no update channel other than the browser's own.