Take-home pay for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 – 5 April 2027): income tax, employee National Insurance, student loan and pension, for England, Wales & Northern Ireland and for Scotland. Figures are annualised estimates — NI is really worked out per pay period.
| Band | Income in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|
Band table is per year. Salary-sacrifice pension comes off before tax, so the bands apply to your pay after pension.
Salary sacrifice means the pension comes off before tax and National Insurance, so part of every £1 into your pension is money that would otherwise have gone to HMRC.
Your real take-home pay for 2026/27: income tax, National Insurance, student loan and pension — England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
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Work out your real take-home pay for the 2026/27 tax year: income tax, employee National Insurance, student loan repayments and pension contributions — for England, Wales & Northern Ireland and for Scotland.
On a £50,000 salary in England with no pension or loan: income tax is £7,486, National Insurance is £2,994.40, and take-home is £39,519.60 a year — £3,293.30 a month. The same salary in Scotland pays £8,982.05 of income tax under the Scottish bands.
Income tax is charged after your Personal Allowance of £12,570, which tapers away by £1 for every £2 earned over £100,000 and is gone at £125,140 — the reason the effective marginal rate in that window is 60%. Employee National Insurance is 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above that. Student loans repay at 9% of pay above your plan threshold (6% for a Postgraduate loan). Pension contributions here are salary-sacrifice, so they come off before both tax and NI.
Scotland sets its own income tax bands: for 2026/27 it has six bands with a 42% higher rate starting at £43,663, so a £50,000 salary pays about £1,496 more income tax than in England. National Insurance is identical.
Between £100,000 and £125,140 you lose £1 of Personal Allowance for every £2 earned. That lost allowance is taxed at 40%, adding an effective 20% on top — a 60% marginal income-tax rate before National Insurance. Pension contributions that bring you under £100,000 restore the allowance.
It works similarly for employees — 8% over the main band, 2% above the Upper Earnings Limit — but it is assessed per pay period rather than cumulatively, and it stops mattering at State Pension age. Your employer pays a separate 15% that never shows on your payslip.
Plan 1: started before September 2012 (or Northern Ireland). Plan 2: England or Wales from 2012 to July 2023. Plan 4: Scotland. Plan 5: England from August 2023. Postgraduate loans are separate and can be deducted at the same time.
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