Written and reviewed by James Whitfield · Updated for 2026/27 · Editorial standards · Methodology
What changes for UK take-home pay in 2026/27: the frozen £12,570 personal allowance and £50,270 higher-rate threshold, fiscal drag, the 2026/27 income tax bands, National Insurance at 8% and 2%, and worked net-pay examples at £30k, £50k and £70k.
In 2026/27 the personal allowance stays frozen at £12,570 and the higher-rate threshold stays at £50,270. Rates are unchanged (20% basic, 40% higher, 45% additional; employee NI 8% then 2% above £50,270), but frozen thresholds pull more people into higher-rate tax. A £50,000 salary keeps about £3,293 a month; a £70,000 salary keeps about £4,263 a month.
This guide explains what actually changes for your take-home pay in 2026/27: frozen thresholds, fiscal drag, the full income tax bands, National Insurance at 8% and 2%, and worked net-pay examples at £30k, £50k and £70k that match the calculator on this site.
Typical default outputs for quick context.
Last updated: August 2026. The headline story for 2026/27 is not a change in tax rates but a change in what those rates now catch. The tax-free personal allowance stays at £12,570 and the point where 40% higher-rate tax begins stays at £50,270. Neither figure has moved with wages or prices, so as pay rises to keep pace with the cost of living, a larger slice of the average salary is taxed.
This is why two people can earn the same headline salary in different years and keep noticeably different amounts. Nothing on your payslip is labelled as a tax rise, yet the effective rate you pay on your whole salary creeps upward each time you get a pay rise while the thresholds stand still.
For most employees the practical questions are simple: what are the bands this year, how much National Insurance comes out, and what does that leave in the bank each month. This guide answers those with current 2026/27 figures and worked examples you can check against your own payslip.
For England, Wales and Northern Ireland the 2026/27 income tax bands are set against your taxable income, which is your gross salary minus the personal allowance. Scotland uses its own separate bands, but the figures below apply to the rest of the UK and to the majority of employees.
The first £12,570 you earn is covered by the personal allowance and is taxed at 0%. The next slice up to £50,270 of total income is taxed at the 20% basic rate. Income between £50,270 and £125,140 is taxed at the 40% higher rate, and anything above £125,140 is taxed at the 45% additional rate. A separate taper removes your personal allowance gradually once income passes £100,000, creating a 60% effective band between £100,000 and £125,140.
Employee National Insurance sits alongside income tax and uses its own thresholds, which for 2026/27 line up closely with the tax thresholds. You pay nothing on earnings up to the primary threshold of £12,570. Between £12,570 and the upper earnings limit of £50,270 you pay the main rate of 8%. On anything above £50,270 the rate drops to 2%.
That step-down matters when you think about pay rises. Below £50,270 each extra pound is hit by 20% income tax plus 8% NI, a combined 28% marginal deduction. Above £50,270 the income tax jumps to 40% but NI falls to 2%, so the combined marginal rate becomes 42%. This is the real reason a raise that pushes you past £50,270 can feel disappointing on your payslip.
Fiscal drag is the quiet effect of leaving thresholds unchanged while pay rises. Because the £50,270 higher-rate threshold has not moved, ordinary pay rises push a growing number of workers over that line for the first time. Roles that were comfortably basic-rate a few years ago now spill into the 40% band.
The same drag works at the bottom. With the personal allowance frozen at £12,570, part-time and lower-paid workers who get inflation-linked increases start paying basic-rate tax on income that would once have been covered by the allowance. The result is a higher effective tax rate across the board without any change to the rates themselves.
For anyone near £50,270, this makes planning worthwhile. Pension contributions and salary sacrifice reduce the salary that counts towards the threshold, which can keep more of a pay rise in the basic-rate band and preserve benefits such as full child benefit. Modelling your exact figures before accepting a raise or changing pension settings is the practical response to fiscal drag.
These examples use the 2026/27 figures above with the standard 1257L tax code, category A National Insurance, no student loan and no pension contribution. They are calculated with the same engine that powers the calculator on this site, so you can reproduce each one exactly.
A £30,000 salary sits entirely in the basic-rate band. Income tax is £3,486 and National Insurance is £1,394.40, leaving take-home pay of £25,119.60 a year, about £2,093 a month. The effective deduction rate is roughly 16%.
A £50,000 salary is just below the higher-rate threshold. Income tax is £7,486 and National Insurance is £2,994.40, giving take-home of £39,519.60 a year, about £3,293 a month, at an effective rate near 21%. Because this salary stays under £50,270, every extra pound is still only taxed at the 28% combined marginal rate.
A £70,000 salary crosses into higher-rate tax. Income tax rises to £15,432 and National Insurance is £3,410.60, leaving take-home of £51,157.40 a year, about £4,263 a month, at an effective rate close to 27%. The marginal rate on the top of this salary is 42%, which is why the jump from £50k to £70k in take-home is smaller than the £20,000 gross gap suggests.
The safest way to use these numbers is as a baseline, then adjust for your real situation. Your tax code, student loan plan, pension contribution rate and whether you use salary sacrifice all change the final figure, sometimes by a large amount. Enter your actual salary and settings in the calculator to get a figure you can compare line by line with your payslip.
If you are close to £50,270, it is worth modelling a version with a slightly higher pension contribution. Because pension contributions reduce the income assessed for higher-rate tax, a small increase can keep part of a pay rise in the basic-rate band and lift your effective take-home more than the raw numbers suggest.
Current tax-year thresholds used across this guide and calculator.
No, the headline income tax rates are unchanged for 2026/27: 20% basic rate, 40% higher rate and 45% additional rate, with a tax-free personal allowance of £12,570. What has changed in practice is that the thresholds are frozen. Because the personal allowance and the £50,270 higher-rate threshold have not risen with wages, ordinary pay rises now push more of your income into tax and more people into the 40% band. This effect is called fiscal drag, and it raises the effective rate you pay even though no rate on the table has moved.
The 40% higher rate applies to taxable income above £50,270 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Because the first £12,570 is covered by the personal allowance and the next slice up to £50,270 is taxed at 20%, only the part of your salary above £50,270 is taxed at 40%. You do not pay 40% on your whole income the moment you cross the line, only on the amount over it. Scotland uses its own separate bands, so Scottish taxpayers reach higher rates at different points.
Employee National Insurance in 2026/27 is 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% on earnings above £50,270, with nothing paid below £12,570. This means the combined marginal deduction on an extra pound is 28% in the basic-rate band (20% tax plus 8% NI) and 42% once you are into higher-rate tax (40% tax plus 2% NI). The drop in the NI rate above £50,270 partly offsets the jump to 40% income tax.
Using standard 2026/27 assumptions (tax code 1257L, category A NI, no student loan, no pension), a £30,000 salary gives take-home of about £25,120 a year (£2,093 a month), a £50,000 salary gives about £39,520 a year (£3,293 a month), and a £70,000 salary gives about £51,157 a year (£4,263 a month). Your own figure changes with your tax code, student loan plan and pension contributions, so it is worth checking your exact setup in the calculator.
Yes. Use the scenario links in this guide to open prefilled states, then adjust salary, region, loan and pension settings.
Yes. Core content is rendered in HTML and linked to salary/city/tool pages for crawlable internal navigation.