How Much Take-Home Pay Will I Get? A UK Salary Guide

On a £45,000 salary in England, Wales or Northern Ireland you will take home about £35,919.60 a year, or £2,993.30 a month, in the 2026–27 tax year. The rest, £9,080.40, goes on Income Tax and employee National Insurance.

Take-home pay is your gross pay minus those two deductions. This guide shows how each is worked out and why the figure on your payslip may not match.

What is take-home pay?

Take-home pay, also called net pay, is what lands in your bank account. Gross pay is the headline salary in your contract, before anything comes off.

Two deductions apply to almost every employee:

• Income Tax, charged on your income above the Personal Allowance.
• Employee National Insurance, charged on your earnings in bands.

Pension contributions, student loan repayments and some benefits can take more. They come later in this guide, because they vary from person to person and the two above do not.

How do you work out take-home pay from a salary?

Five steps, in this order:

1. Find your Personal Allowance. For most people it is £12,570 in 2026–27, the amount you can earn before paying Income Tax.
2. Work out taxable income. Salary minus the Personal Allowance.
3. Charge Income Tax band by band. Each rate applies only to its own slice of taxable income.
4. Work out employee National Insurance. This uses your salary, not your taxable income, so the Personal Allowance does not reduce it.
5. Take both away from your salary. Divide by 12 for a monthly figure.

take-home pay = salary − Income Tax − employee National Insurance

The rates and thresholds change with the tax year. For 2026–27 the UK take-home pay calculator lists every Income Tax and National Insurance band on its page, built from GOV.UK’s Income Tax rates and National Insurance guidance. Check GOV.UK for the current year before you rely on any figure here.

A worked example: a £45,000 salary

Income Tax

• Personal Allowance: £12,570.
• Taxable income: £45,000 − £12,570 = £32,430.
• All of it falls in the 20% basic rate band, so Income Tax is £32,430 × 20% = £6,486.

Employee National Insurance

• The 8% rate applies to earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and £45,000 sits inside that band.
• £45,000 − £12,570 = £32,430, and £32,430 × 8% = £2,594.40.

Take-home pay

• Total deductions: £6,486 + £2,594.40 = £9,080.40, an effective rate of 20.18%.
• Annual take-home: £45,000 − £9,080.40 = £35,919.60.
• Monthly take-home: £35,919.60 ÷ 12 = £2,993.30.

You keep just under 80p of every pound. National Insurance is the deduction people tend to forget, and here it is worth £2,594.40 on top of the Income Tax.

Try it with your own salary

The calculator below opens on £45,000 in England, so you will see the figures above straight away. Type your own gross salary and the breakdown updates band by band.

What does take-home pay look like at different salaries?

These figures come from the same calculator, for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2026–27.

The share you lose climbs gradually: 16.27% at £30,000, 20.18% at £45,000 and 24.40% at £60,000. Higher earners do not lose a flat slice, because each higher rate only reaches the pounds above its threshold.

Does a pay rise ever leave you worse off?

No. Moving into the 40% band does not tax your whole salary at 40%, only the pounds above the threshold.

Take the jump from £45,000 to £60,000. Your gross pay rises by £15,000, and take-home pay rises from £35,919.60 to £45,357.40, which is £9,437.80 more. You keep about 63p of each extra pound, even though part of the rise is taxed at 40%.

Why might my payslip show a different figure?

An online estimate works on a plain annual salary. Payroll does not. Common reasons for a gap:

• Your tax code. Your employer deducts Income Tax using the code HMRC supplies, and the code can include adjustments for benefits or underpaid tax. GOV.UK explains tax codes and says the code is your responsibility to check if the tax looks wrong.
• Pension contributions. Under a net pay arrangement your employer takes workplace pension contributions out before deducting Income Tax, according to GOV.UK’s pension tax relief page. That lowers your take-home pay but also your tax bill, so the net cost is less than the contribution.
• Student loan repayments. These are usually taken through payroll as a percentage of pay above a threshold that depends on your plan, as GOV.UK sets out. The UK student loan calculator estimates that deduction so you can take it off the figure above.
• Bonuses, overtime and pay-period effects. Tax and National Insurance are worked out each pay period, so an uneven month can differ from a twelfth of the annual figure.
• Benefits in kind and other jobs. A company car, private medical cover or a second income all change the sums.

The calculator leaves every one of these out and says so on its page, so treat its figure as the starting point, then subtract what applies to you.

Which tax rules does the estimate use?

The estimate covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland sets its own Income Tax bands and rates, so a Scottish taxpayer should not rely on it. National Insurance, by contrast, is the same across the UK.

It also assumes the standard Personal Allowance and treats your salary as your adjusted net income. If you earn self-employed, rental or dividend income as well, those need their own calculation.

Common mistakes when estimating take-home pay

• Applying one rate to the whole salary. A 40% taxpayer does not pay 40% on everything.
• Forgetting National Insurance. On £45,000 it takes £2,594.40 on top of £6,486 of Income Tax.
• Using the wrong tax year. Thresholds and rates are reviewed, so a figure from an earlier year can be out by hundreds of pounds.
• Treating the estimate as a payslip. It is an annual estimate. Your payslip is the authority for what you are actually paid.

What to do next

Enter your gross salary in the UK take-home pay calculator and note the monthly figure. If you have a student loan, deduct the estimate from the UK student loan calculator.

To compare a salary with an hourly rate, the hourly to salary calculator converts between them. Employers can use the UK cost of employing someone calculator to see what a salary costs on top of the pay itself. And if you are checking what a mortgage fits within your monthly figure, read how a mortgage repayment is calculated.

Sources: GOV.UK: Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances, GOV.UK: National Insurance, how much you pay, GOV.UK: Tax codes, GOV.UK: Repaying your student loan, what you pay, GOV.UK: Tax relief on pension contributions.

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