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Where does my salary actually go?

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Every pound, accounted for, in front of you.

Ask most take-home calculators what you earn and they hand you a number in a box. Fine, if the number was all you wanted. But if you have ever looked at a payslip and wondered where the other third went, a box is no use to you: it gives you the answer and hides the sum.

What this one does differently

It does the sum where you can see it. Put in what you earn, say where you pay tax (Scotland’s bands are different, and most calculators quietly pretend they are not), and tell it about your pension and any student loan. You get the figure, and then every line of the working underneath it: what each deduction was charged on, at what rate, and which government page that rate came from.

Two things it does that the others mostly do not. It treats salary sacrifice and a net-pay pension as different things, because they are: the same contribution leaves you with a different take-home under each, and the gap is the National Insurance on it. And it tells you what your next £1,000 is actually worth to you, which near a band edge is never the headline rate. Someone in England on £50,000 keeps £618 of the next £1,000, not £600 and not £800.

a year
Where do you pay income tax?
Workplace pension

Relief-at-source schemes (most personal pensions, and some workplace ones) are not modelled here: they work differently and a rough version would be wrong near a band edge.

Student loan
You take home£39,520a year, about £3,293 a month or £760 a week

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.

Gross
£50,000
Income tax
£7,486.00
National Insurance
£2,994.40
Deductions overall
21.0% of gross
Your next £1,000
38.2% goes in deductions; you keep £618 of it
Take-home: £39,519.60 (79.0%)Income tax: £7,486.00 (15.0%)National Insurance: £2,994.40 (6.0%)
  • Take-home 79.0%
  • Income tax 15.0%
  • National Insurance 6.0%
Show the working
LineOnRateAmountRunning
Gross salary£50,000.00£50,000.00
Personal Allowance£12,570.00 tax-free
Basic rate£37,430.0020%−£7,486.00£42,514.00
National Insurance, main rate£37,430.008%−£2,994.40£39,519.60

Tax year 2026-27, England and Northern Ireland. Figures dataset 2026-27.6, last read against its sources on 2026-08-26.

What this assumes
  • Employment income only, taxed under PAYE, on an annual basis.
  • No pension contribution.
  • Non-savings, non-dividend income only. Savings and dividend income are taxed under separate rates.
  • The full Personal Allowance applies.
  • Annual basis, using the published annual thresholds. Real Class 1 contributions are worked out per pay period on that period's earnings, with no year-end smoothing, so a year of uneven pay produces a different figure.
  • Earnings between the lower earnings limit and the primary threshold attract no charge but still build a contribution record.
Where every figure came from

What this is, and what it is not

It is arithmetic about the 2026/27 rules for employment income under PAYE, and every figure it used is listed under the result with the date it was last read against its source. It is not advice. 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. If your money comes from more than a salary, the side hustle tax piece covers the £1,000 trading allowance and what changes once you cross it. And if the figure at the top is bigger than it used to be, this is what tends to happen next.

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