Income tax owed across rUK and Scottish bands for 2025/26.
Your details
Total income tax (year)
£6,486
Taxable income: £32,430
By band
| Basic rate (20%) | £32,430 → £6,486 |
| Higher rate (40%) | £0 → £0 |
| Additional rate (45%) | £0 → £0 |
| Total income tax | £6,486 |
Interactive scenarios
Tax and deductions, your way
Tax year
Region
Pay schedule
Salary £45,000
Net (monthly)
£2,806
Income tax (monthly)
£541
NI (monthly)
£216
Effective rate
20.2%
The full guide
Worked examples with real figures, the order payroll applies them in, and the traps that catch people out.
Crossing into higher rate does not reprice your salary. It reprices the money above the threshold and leaves everything beneath it exactly where it was.
On £55,000 the effective income tax rate sits closer to eighteen percent than to forty. Seeing the bands stacked is usually enough to end the argument in the office.
Only the money inside a band pays that band's rate. Crossing into higher rate reprices the slice above the threshold and nothing beneath it.
Between £100,000 and £125,140 the personal allowance falls away by a pound for every two pounds earned. The headline says forty percent. The real rate across that stretch is sixty, which is why a bonus there can leave £400 of every £1,000.
Thresholds move rarely while pay drifts upward, so more of each salary lands in a higher band every year without any rate changing at all.
Income tax bands
UK bands
The first £12,570 pays nothing. The next £37,700 pays twenty percent, which is £7,540. The remaining £4,730 pays forty percent, which is £1,892.
Total income tax is £9,432 on £55,000, an average of just over seventeen percent, even though the top slice is charged at forty.
Push a pension contribution into that top slice and it costs sixty pence in the pound of take home rather than eighty. The band you are in decides the price of every decision underneath it.
Worked payslip
Gross to net, line by line
Sample payslip
Month 06 · 2025/26Gross pay
£2,916.67
Pension (5%)
£145.83
Taxable pay
£2,770.84
Income tax
£373.83
National Insurance
£149.52
Net pay
£2,247.66
New pay stacks on top of old pay, so it is charged at the rate of the band it lands in rather than your average rate. A £3,000 rise that crosses the higher rate threshold can hand over roughly £1,240 of itself.
Run the current salary, note the net. Run the new one, note the net. The difference between those two figures is the only number worth celebrating.
Then route part of the rise into the pension. Take home barely moves, the pot jumps and the tax bill falls. On the wrong side of a threshold that trade is close to free money.
A pound in the pot costs a basic rate taxpayer eighty pence of take home and a higher rate taxpayer sixty. Inside the allowance taper it can cost forty. The band you sit in sets the price.
Salary sacrifice removes the contribution from gross pay, so it avoids National Insurance as well as income tax. Relief at source takes it from net pay and HMRC adds the basic rate back, leaving higher rate taxpayers to claim the rest through self assessment.
Employer matching outweighs a small salary difference within a couple of years, and the gap keeps widening for the rest of a working life.
Where each pound goes
Where each pound of salary lands
A tax code change mid year. HMRC adjusts the code, payroll applies it, and the letter explaining it rarely gets read. Check the code on the payslip against the one you expect.
A taxable benefit such as private medical cover. It shrinks the allowance, so a perk raises the tax bill and take home falls in the month it starts.
A switch to salary sacrifice. Gross drops before anything else, which changes every line beneath it and can affect mortgage affordability too.
A bonus month. Income tax evens out across the year through the cumulative system. National Insurance never does.
Rates, bands and thresholds follow published HMRC and gov.uk figures for the 2025/26 tax year, held in one table that every tool reads. April arrives, the table changes, and the results move together.
Earlier years stay available through the year selector, so a late self assessment runs on the numbers that applied at the time rather than today's.
Some cases still need an accountant. K codes carrying negative allowances, bespoke sacrifice arrangements, the annual allowance taper for very high earners, and anything involving two employments at once.
UK Income Tax Calculator answers one question. The salary calculator turns gross into net, the income tax calculator splits the bill by band, the National Insurance calculator shows the step at the upper limit, and the pension calculator prices a percentage change three ways at once.
Every tool reads the same rate table, so two pages never disagree. Run this one, note the figure, then open the next and watch which line moves.
Cash is the floor of a decision, not the decision. An hour a day handed back by a shorter commute is roughly two hundred and fifty hours a year, and nothing prices that against a manager worth working for.
Some benefits convert cleanly. Health cover has a taxable value, a learning budget has a receipt, extra leave has a daily rate. Share options that vest over four years and enhanced parental leave do not, so weigh those separately rather than treating them as salary.
Example gallery
Real inputs, real outputs
Graduate starter
First job, default workplace pension.
Gross / yr
£28,000
Pension
5%
Income tax
£3,086
NI
£1,234
Mid career
Standard tax code, modest pension uplift.
Gross / yr
£45,000
Pension
6%
Income tax
£6,486
NI
£2,594
Higher rate
Crossing the higher rate band.
Gross / yr
£72,000
Pension
8%
Income tax
£16,232
NI
£3,451
Scotland mid
Scottish bands applied.
Gross / yr
£45,000
Pension
5%
Income tax
£6,928
NI
£2,594
About this calculator
The UK Income Tax Calculator works out how much income tax you owe across the relevant bands, rest-of-UK or Scottish, for the 2025/26 tax year.
Quick reference