Take-home pay vs gross salary (UK 2026/27)
The salary on a job offer, a contract or a LinkedIn headline is gross. Rent, groceries and the mortgage come from take-home — what is left after PAYE. For 2026/27 those two numbers are still far apart, even though rUK income tax and National Insurance rates did not move.
This guide uses the same 2026/27 PAYE engine as the UK salary calculator. Figures below are England, Wales and Northern Ireland, tax code 1257L, with no pension or student loan, rounded to the nearest pound. They are illustrations, not a personal tax calculation.
Gross is the contract. Take-home is the payslip
Gross salary is the contractual figure your employer uses before payroll. Take-home (net pay) is what hits your account after:
- Income tax, using your tax code and the 2026/27 bands
- Employee Class 1 National Insurance
- Optional deductions such as pension and student loan
A £40,000 offer is not £3,333 a month to spend. On the headline assumptions above it is about £32,320 a year, or £2,693 a month. You keep 80.8% of gross.
That is why comparing offers, budgeting a house move, or judging a raise on the gross number alone is misleading. Run the same salary through the UK salary calculator if you want the monthly split, Scottish bands, a pension or a student loan.
What comes off a UK payslip in 2026/27
For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the 2026/27 tax year guide is unchanged from 2025/26:
- Personal Allowance — £12,570 (0%). Frozen until at least April 2028.
- Basic rate — 20% on the next £37,700 (£12,571–£50,270).
- Higher rate — 40% from £50,271 to £125,140.
- Additional rate — 45% above £125,140.
- Personal Allowance taper — £1 of allowance withdrawn for every £2 of income above £100,000, which creates an effective 60% income-tax rate in that band.
National Insurance is aligned with the same £12,570 / £50,270 thresholds: 8% between them, 2% above the Upper Earnings Limit. Combined with basic-rate tax, that is 28% on each extra pound between the allowance and £50,270. Combined with higher-rate tax, it is 42%.
Student loans and workplace pensions are extra. They are not in the table below; they are in the calculator.
Worked examples: £30,000 to £125,140
| Gross salary | Income tax | National Insurance | Take-home | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £30,000 | £3,486 | £1,394 | £25,120 | 83.7% |
| £40,000 | £5,486 | £2,194 | £32,320 | 80.8% |
| £50,000 | £7,486 | £2,994 | £39,520 | 79.0% |
| £60,000 | £11,432 | £3,211 | £45,357 | 75.6% |
| £80,000 | £19,432 | £3,611 | £56,957 | 71.2% |
| £100,000 | £27,432 | £4,011 | £68,557 | 68.6% |
| £125,140 | £42,516 | £4,513 | £78,111 | 62.4% |
Read the last column as the average rate you keep, not the rate on the next pound. A £40,000 salary still sits in the basic-rate band, so the next £1 is taxed at 28% (20% + 8% NI) even though you keep 80.8% of the whole salary.
On £40,000:
- Income tax £5,486
- National Insurance £2,194
- Take-home £32,320
On £60,000 you have crossed £50,270. Income tax jumps to £11,432 and NI to £3,211, because the slice above the higher-rate threshold is taxed at 40% while NI drops to 2%. Take-home is £45,357 — 75.6% of gross.
If you want a dedicated page for a round number, start with £40,000, £50,000, £60,000 or £100,000. Each of those pages uses the same rates.
On £40,000 the monthly picture is about £2,693 take-home, £457 income tax and £183 NI. That is the number to budget with. The offer letter’s £3,333 is the gross month, before PAYE.
A £30,000 salary still keeps 83.7% of gross (£25,120). By £100,000 you keep 68.6% (£68,557), and the next pounds are the expensive ones.
Frozen thresholds still change take-home
Rates did not go up for 2026/27. Thresholds also did not. That is the point.
The Personal Allowance has been £12,570 since 2021/22 and is legislated to stay there until at least 2027/28. The basic-rate limit and the NI Upper Earnings Limit are also frozen at £50,270. As cash wages rise with inflation or a pay review, more of the same “real” salary is pulled into tax. That is fiscal drag, and it is why two people on the same headline salary in 2021 and 2026 do not have the same take-home in today’s prices.
The sharpest illustration is the £100,000–£125,140 band. Every £2 above £100,000 withdraws £1 of Personal Allowance, so that slice faces 40% income tax plus the extra 20% from the withdrawn allowance — 60% income tax — plus 2% NI. The tax year guide walks through the bands side by side with 2025/26; the calculator will show you if a specific salary sits in the taper.
Scotland, student loans and pensions change the gap
The table is rUK. Scottish income tax uses six bands above the allowance. Starter and basic thresholds rose by 7.4% for 2026/27; higher (42% from £43,663), advanced and top rates did not. On £40,000 the difference is small — about £65 less take-home in Scotland (£32,255 vs £32,320). On £50,000 it is larger: £1,496 (£38,024 vs £39,520), because more of that salary is already in the 42% Scottish higher-rate band.
A Plan 2 student loan (threshold £29,385 in 2026/27) takes 9% of income above the threshold. On £40,000 that is another £955, which cuts take-home from £32,320 to £31,364. Plans 1, 4 and 5 use different thresholds; the calculator has all of them.
A workplace pension reduces taxable pay (and, with salary sacrifice, NI as well). That is worth modelling before you treat the table as “your” number — start from the pension guide and tick the scheme type on the salary calculator.
How to read this on a real payslip
Tax code 1257L means a £12,570 Personal Allowance. If your code is different — emergency, BR, a year-to-date adjustment — the table will not match your payslip. The calculator lets you change the code.
PAYE is usually cumulative. A mid-year start, a bonus, or a tax-code change can make one month look nothing like gross ÷ 12 minus the table. Use the annual figures here as the full-year position, then let payroll do the intra-year smoothing.
Student loan and pension lines on the payslip are extra deductions. They are why two colleagues on the same gross can take home different amounts. The salary calculator is the place to add those; this page is the baseline.
Get your own number
Use the UK salary calculator for 2026/27 take-home with your tax code, region, pension and student loan. If the question is “what is this raise actually worth?”, the next post is what a £5k pay rise is really worth after tax and the tool is the pay rise calculator.
Figures are illustrative estimates from published 2026/27 PAYE bands — not tax, financial or legal advice. Actual pay depends on your tax code, payroll and HMRC.