Calculator · 2026/27
Income tax calculator
Income tax on its own, band by band — separated from National Insurance, which is a different tax with different thresholds and is the thing most often confused with it.
Your result
Worked example: £45,000
| Step | Applied to | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal allowance | first £12,570 | 0% | £0 |
| Basic rate | £32,430 of it | 20% | £6,486 |
| Income tax | — | — | £6,486 |
National Insurance is charged separately on the same pay and adds £2,594.40 here. It is a different tax with its own thresholds, which is why this page keeps them apart.
Income tax is not National Insurance
They are charged on the same pay, in the same period, by the same payroll, and they are constantly confused — but almost nothing about them matches. Income tax has a tax-free personal allowance and rises through bands as you earn more. National Insurance has no allowance of that kind, starts at a different threshold, and falls from 8% to 2% above £50,270. One gets more expensive at the margin as you earn; the other gets cheaper.
Adding them is what produces the marginal rates the rest of this site is about — including the 62% band, which exists only because an income tax rule and the allowance interact. The combined picture →
The allowance, and where it goes
The personal allowance is £12,570 of tax-free income. Above £100,000 it is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 earned and is gone entirely at £125,140. In that window each extra pound is taxed at its band rate and drags a previously tax-free pound into tax, which is why the effective rate on income there is far above any published band. The £100,000 trap →
Where £45,000 sits in the system
Every calculator on this site runs on the same thresholds, and the reason a figure surprises people is almost always that it sits near one of them. This is what is closest to the worked example above — the thresholds that decide what the next pound is worth, rather than what the last one was.
£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 what a pension contribution would buy
There is no threshold within reach below £45,000, so a pension contribution here is not about ducking under anything — it is simply the ordinary trade. Sacrificing £2,500 costs you £1,800 in take-home, because 28% of it was never going to reach you anyway, and puts the full £2,500 into the pot. That is £2,500 of saving for £1,800 of spending power — a ratio of 1.39 to one, and it is the same ratio for every pound until the next band.
Student loans on the same figure
A student loan is not a tax and it is not in any headline rate, but it leaves the same pay packet on the same day — so it belongs in any figure used to make a decision. This is what each plan takes at the worked example above.
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.
One engine behind all eleven
Every calculator on this site runs the same tax engine, and the engine file your browser downloads is byte-identical to the one that generated these pages — a test asserts it, because two implementations of a tax rule is one too many. So the figures here cannot disagree with the salary tables, the hourly pages or any other calculator: they are the same arithmetic asked a different question. The method page sets out how the bands are discovered rather than typed, and sources lists every parameter with the government page and the date it was read from.
Questions people actually ask
How much income tax will I pay on £45,000?
£6,486 in England, Wales & Northern Ireland for 2026/27 — the first £12,570 is tax free, and the rest is taxed through the bands shown above. National Insurance is separate and adds £2,594.40.
Is income tax different in Scotland?
Yes. Income tax on employment income is devolved, so Scotland has six bands where the rest of the UK has three, and its higher rate starts at £43,663 rather than £50,271. National Insurance is identical across the UK. The comparison →
What is my tax-free allowance?
£12,570 for most people. It is reduced by £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000 and is nil at £125,140. A pension contribution reduces the income the taper is measured against, which is why it can restore the allowance.
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.