Key takeaways
- The personal allowance is £12,570, the basic rate is 20% to £50,270, the higher rate is 40% to £125,140 and the additional rate is 45% above that.
- Employee National Insurance is 8% between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above.
- Scotland has six bands, from a 19% starter rate to a 48% top rate, with the same £12,570 allowance.
- Three numbers to remember: £12,570 tax-free, £50,270 where the higher rate starts, and £100,000 where the allowance starts to disappear.
For the tax year 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027, the personal allowance is £12,570, the basic rate is 20% to £50,270, the higher rate is 40% to £125,140, and the additional rate is 45% above that — with employee National Insurance at 8% to £50,270, then 2%.
That one paragraph is the whole system in miniature. Everything else on this page is the detail: the exact bands, the £100,000 trap, Scotland's six bands, student loan thresholds, and pension auto-enrolment — each with a worked example so you can check your own payslip against it. Every figure comes from the same rates file our calculators use, last checked against GOV.UK on 5 November 2026. If a figure here ever disagrees with your payslip, the payslip is not necessarily wrong — tax codes, benefits in kind and salary sacrifice all change the picture — but the rates themselves are the official ones, and the calculators on this site will show you the working.
Try it as you read
Enter your salary and watch each rate on this page turn into your actual pay.
Income tax: England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Income tax is charged on your taxable pay — your gross salary, minus any pension contribution made under the net-pay arrangement, minus your personal allowance. The personal allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570, which means the first £12,570 of your income is tax-free. What is left is taxed in bands:
| Band | Taxable income | Gross income (at full allowance) | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic rate | £1 – £37,700 | £12,571 – £50,270 | 20% |
| Higher rate | £37,701 – £125,140 | £50,271 – £125,140 | 40% |
| Additional rate | Above £125,140 | Above £125,140 | 45% |
The gross-income column assumes the full £12,570 allowance, which is the position for most people on the standard 1257L tax code. Two things move it. First, your tax code: a different code changes your allowance, and flat codes such as BR or D0 replace the bands entirely. Second, the taper: above £100,000 you lose £1 of personal allowance for every £2 you earn, so by £125,140 the allowance is £0 and every pound is taxed. That taper is the subject of its own article — the £100,000 tax trap, explained with numbers — because it creates an effective 60% marginal band that catches people by surprise.
A worked example makes the bands concrete. On a £35,000 salary with no pension and no student loan, your taxable pay is £35,000 minus the £12,570 allowance, which is £22,430. All of that sits in the basic-rate band, so income tax is 20% of £22,430: £4,486.00. On £50,000 the taxable pay is £37,430, still entirely inside the basic band, so tax is £7,486.00. The higher rate only starts to bite above £50,270 of gross pay — which is why £50,270 is the most important number in the English system after the allowance itself.
National Insurance: what the 8% actually is
Employee National Insurance (Class 1) is charged on your gross pay — before pension is taken off, which is the key difference from income tax. The 2026/27 figures are:
| Pay | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £12,570 a year | 0% |
| £12,571 – £50,270 a year | 8% |
| Above £50,270 a year | 2% |
On that same £35,000 salary, National Insurance is 8% of £22,430 — the pay between £12,570 and £35,000 — which is £1,794.40. On £50,000 it is 8% of £37,430, which is £2,994.40. Above £50,270 the rate drops to 2%, so National Insurance never runs away the way income tax does: on a £110,000 salary it is £4,210.60, made up of £3,016.00 at 8% and £1,194.60 at 2%.
Your employer pays National Insurance too — 15% of pay above £5,000 a year — plus at least 3% of your qualifying earnings into your pension. On a £35,000 salary that is £4,500.00 of employer National Insurance and £862.80 of employer pension, so the true cost of employing you is £40,362.80 even though your gross pay is £35,000. That is not deducted from your pay, but it is the reason your employer cares about salary levels as much as you do.
Scotland: six bands instead of three
Scotland sets its own income tax bands, and it has six of them. The personal allowance is the same £12,570, and the taper above £100,000 works the same way — but the bands themselves are different:
| Band | Gross income | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Starter rate | £12,571 – £16,537 | 19% |
| Basic rate | £16,538 – £29,526 | 20% |
| Intermediate rate | £29,527 – £43,662 | 21% |
| Higher rate | £43,663 – £75,000 | 42% |
| Advanced rate | £75,001 – £125,140 | 45% |
| Top rate | Above £125,140 | 48% |
Two features matter. The 19% starter rate means lower earners pay slightly less in Scotland: on £30,000, Scottish income tax is £3,451.07 against £3,486.00 in England — £34.93 less. But the 42% higher rate starts at £43,663, far earlier than England's 40% at £50,270, so middle and higher earners pay more: on £50,000, Scottish tax is £8,982.05 against £7,486.00 in England — £1,496.05 more. National Insurance and student loan are UK-wide, so the take-home difference is exactly the tax difference. Run your own salary through the Scottish income tax calculator to see which side of the line you fall on.
Student loan thresholds
Student loan repayments are not a tax, but they come off your pay in the same way, and the threshold — not the rate — is what decides how much you pay. Every undergraduate plan charges 9% of pay above its threshold; the Postgraduate loan charges 6% above £21,000 and stacks with an undergraduate plan.
| Plan | Annual threshold | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Plan 1 | £26,900 | 9% |
| Plan 2 | £29,385 | 9% |
| Plan 4 | £33,795 | 9% |
| Plan 5 | £25,000 | 9% |
| Postgraduate | £21,000 | 6% |
At £40,000 a year, that works out as £1,179.00 a year on Plan 1, £955.35 on Plan 2, £558.45 on Plan 4, £1,350.00 on Plan 5, and £1,140.00 on a Postgraduate loan. The same salary, the same 9% rate — and a £791.55-a-year difference between Plan 4 and Plan 5, purely because of the threshold. The Plan 2 threshold is frozen to April 2030, which means it will not rise with inflation and more of each pay rise will fall above it. Work out your own figure on the student loan calculator. One caution: these thresholds are taken from consistent official-source reporting and are flagged for re-verification against the GOV.UK student-loan repayment page before launch — if GOV.UK says otherwise, GOV.UK wins.
Pension auto-enrolment
Auto-enrolment is the default pension arrangement for most employees. The minimum total contribution is 8% of qualifying earnings, of which your employer pays at least 3% and you pay 5%. Qualifying earnings are the band £6,240 to £50,270 — not your whole salary. On a £35,000 salary, qualifying earnings are £35,000 minus £6,240, which is £28,760, so your 5% contribution is £1,438.00 a year and your employer's 3% is £862.80.
The contribution is deducted before income tax (the net-pay model), but National Insurance is still charged on your full gross pay. That is why a £35,000 salary with auto-enrolment pays £4,198.40 of income tax rather than £4,486.00 — the £1,438.00 pension comes off the taxable pay first — while National Insurance stays at £1,794.40. The take-home pay is £27,569.20 a year, or £2,297.43 a month. Salary sacrifice is the alternative arrangement: it reduces your contractual gross first, so it also cuts National Insurance and student loan. The pension calculator compares the two routes side by side.
Worked examples: three salaries, start to finish
| Salary | Income tax | National Insurance | Take-home / year | Take-home / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £20,000 | £1,486.00 | £594.40 | £17,919.60 | £1,493.30 |
| £35,000 | £4,486.00 | £1,794.40 | £28,719.60 | £2,393.30 |
| £50,000 | £7,486.00 | £2,994.40 | £39,519.60 | £3,293.30 |
These three rows use tax code 1257L, no pension and no student loan. Add the standard auto-enrolment pension to the £35,000 row and the picture becomes: pension £1,438.00, income tax £4,198.40, National Insurance £1,794.40, take-home pay £27,569.20 a year. Add a Plan 2 student loan to a £110,000 salary with no pension and it becomes: personal allowance tapered to £7,570, income tax £33,432.00, National Insurance £4,210.60, student loan £7,255.35, take-home pay £65,102.05 a year. Those are checked against HMRC's own worked examples, reproduced to the penny — if the calculators on this site ever disagree with this page, one of them is wrong, and we want to know.
What changes, and when to check back
These rates are fixed for the tax year 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. The main rates for 2027/28 have already been published unchanged — the same £12,570 allowance, the same bands, the same National Insurance rates — but a Budget can still move them, and this page and the rates page are updated within 48 hours of any fiscal event, with every change logged on the changelog. Two things to watch: the Plan 2 student-loan threshold is frozen to April 2030, so it will quietly take more of each pay rise, and the personal-allowance taper has been frozen in cash terms for years, which drags more people into the £100,000 trap each year as salaries rise. Neither is a rate change — both are the absence of one, which is exactly why they bite.
If you only remember three numbers, remember these: £12,570 is tax-free, £50,270 is where the higher rate and the 2% National Insurance rate both start, and £100,000 is where your allowance starts to disappear.
Everything else on this page is arithmetic from those three. And if you want the arithmetic done for your exact salary, the take-home pay calculator does it in under a second.
Work out your exact pay
The take-home pay calculator does the arithmetic for your exact salary in under a second.
Rates: GOV.UK — last checked 5 November 2026. This site is not affiliated with HMRC or GOV.UK.