Is my pay rise actually worth taking?

What the next £1,000 is really worth to you, and which line in the rules is responsible when the answer is less than you’d think.

Nobody warns you that a pay rise has a rate of its own. The band rate on your tax code is what the first pound of your salary pays; the rise pays whatever the rules charge at the top of it, and near a line that can be a great deal more. A rise that takes a higher earner from £70,000 to £73,000 with two children in the house keeps 46p in the pound, not 58p, because the Child Benefit charge is clawing the benefit back at the same time as the tax and the National Insurance. Nothing on the payslip says so. This page does.

How it values the rise

By difference, not by band. It works out the whole position on the old salary and again on the new one, and what the rules took in between is the answer: income tax, National Insurance, student loan repayments, Child Benefit clawed back, each on its own line with the rate it came out at. Working that way is what makes a line inside the rise visible. A rise that starts under £100,000 and ends over it is charged partly at 42% and partly at 62% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (in Scotland the second part is 69.5%), and a band rate multiplied by the rise would miss the second part entirely.

What it says when the answer is less than you’d think

It names the line. If the rise crosses the £100,000 point, the £60,000 Child Benefit point or a student loan threshold, the result says which one and where, because that is the fact that explains the number. A pension contribution from gross pay lowers the adjusted net income those lines are measured on, and the page that finds the line does that sum: the smallest contribution that brings the figure back under, and what it costs in take-home. Whether that suits you is a different kind of question, and neither page answers it.

Your salary now, before anything is taken off

£ a year

The rise

£ a year

The increase in salary, not the new salary. A bonus works the same way for one year.

Where do you pay income tax?

England or Northern Ireland Scotland Wales

Workplace pension

None Salary sacrifice (your payslip calls it "smart", "exchange" or "sacrifice") Taken from pay before tax (a "net pay" scheme)

You put in% of salary£ a year

A percentage rises with the salary, so part of the rise goes into the pension; a fixed £ amount does not. Relief-at-source schemes (most personal pensions, and some workplace ones) are not modelled here.

Student loan

Plan 1 (started before Sept 2012, England and Wales; or Northern Ireland) Plan 2 (started Sept 2012 to July 2023, England and Wales) Plan 4 (Scotland) Plan 5 (started from Aug 2023, England) Postgraduate loan

Children Child Benefit is paid for

Only matters if you are the higher earner in the household and your adjusted net income is, or would be, over £60,000: the High Income Child Benefit Charge claws the benefit back between £60,000 and £80,000. It is assessed on the higher earner alone, never on household income. Put 0 if nobody in the household claims it.

Other income that counts

£ a year

Optional. Bonus, taxable benefits such as a car or medical cover, rental profit, and all taxable interest and dividends (ISA income does not count). It moves the lines, because the lines are measured on adjusted net income, not salary.

Value the rise

Of a £3,000 rise, what reaches you£1,389a year. The rules take £1,611, which is 53.7% of the rise

Arithmetic about the rules, not advice. It does not know your circumstances, and a payslip can differ by a few pounds through rounding and tax codes.

Take-home pay now

£51,157

Take-home pay after, before the Child Benefit charge

£52,897

Per pound of the rise

46p kept

Child Benefit kept

£1,169 now, £818 after

Where this rise lands

Inside the band where the High Income Child Benefit Charge applies, which is why every pound of it is charged at more than the headline band rate.

That is the arithmetic of the rules on this rise, and it is all this page knows. What a rise is worth beyond the money that reaches you, the pension it builds, the future rises it compounds into and the job that comes with it, is not something a calculator can weigh. Where a line sits inside or across a rise, a pension contribution from gross pay lowers the adjusted net income the line is measured on. That money is then in a pension, invested, and out of reach until at least the minimum pension age. The sum for it is on the page that finds the line, and whether it suits you is a question about your circumstances, not about the rules.

Show the working

Line	On	Rate	Amount	Running
The rise			£3,000.00	£3,000.00
Income tax on the increase	£3,000.00	40%	−£1,200.00	£1,800.00
National Insurance on the increase	£3,000.00	2%	−£60.00	£1,740.00
Child Benefit clawed back by the charge	£3,000.00	11.69%	−£350.61	£1,389.39

Copy a link to this result Every amount is rounded to the nearest £500 in the link. This page sends nothing you type anywhere; the link exists only if you copy it.

What this is, and what it is not

It is arithmetic about the 2026/27 rules for employment income under PAYE, with every figure it used listed under the result and the date it was last read against its source. It is not advice, and it is not a verdict on the rise: what a rise is worth beyond the money that reaches you, the pension it builds, the future rises it compounds into and the job that comes with it, is not something a calculator can weigh. It does not know your tax code, and a real payslip works its sums per pay period rather than per year, so expect a few pounds of difference, not hundreds. For the full sum on the salary itself, start with where your salary actually goes; for the childcare line in particular, this is the page that finds it.