Written and reviewed by James Whitfield · Updated for 2026/27 · Editorial standards · Methodology
The personal allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570, frozen again, so the first £12,570 you earn is tax-free (£1,047.50 a month). It is cut by £1 for every £2 of income over £100,000 and gone at £125,140. Covers tax code 1257L, Marriage Allowance, Blind Person's Allowance and Scotland.
The personal allowance for 2026/27 is £12,570: the amount you can earn before paying income tax, worth £1,047.50 a month or £241.73 a week tax-free1. It is frozen, unchanged since April 2021, and applies UK-wide including Scotland6. Income above it is taxed at 20% up to £50,270, then 40% and 45%. If your income is over £100,000 you lose £1 of allowance for every £2 above that, so it is gone at £125,1402. Tax code 1257L means you are getting the full allowance3.
Typical default outputs for quick context.
The standard personal allowance for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027) is £12,570. It is the amount of income you can receive before any income tax is due1. Through PAYE it is spread evenly across the year, so a monthly-paid employee gets £1,047.50 of tax-free pay each month and a weekly-paid worker gets £241.73 a week.
The allowance is unchanged from 2025/26 and has been £12,570 since April 2021. It applies per person, not per job: if you have two jobs the allowance is normally set against your main one (tax code 1257L) and the second job is taxed from the first pound (tax code BR).
Income tax is charged on what is left after the personal allowance. For 2026/27 the next £37,700 of income (up to £50,270) is taxed at the 20% basic rate, income from £50,271 to £125,140 at 40% and anything above at 45%. On a £30,000 salary, for example, £17,430 is taxable and the income tax is £3,486; with £1,394.40 of National Insurance, take-home is £25,119.60, or £2,093.30 a month.
| Slice of income | Rate | Tax on a £30,000 salary |
|---|---|---|
| £0 to £12,570 (personal allowance) | 0% | £0 |
| £12,571 to £50,270 | 20% | £3,486 (on £17,430) |
| £50,271 to £125,140 | 40% | not reached |
| Over £125,140 | 45% | not reached |
| Total income tax | £3,486 |
Because the allowance has not moved since 2021 while wages have, every pay rise since then has been taxed in full from the first pound above £12,570. Someone on £20,000 pays £1,486 income tax in 2026/27, exactly what they would have paid on £20,000 five years ago, even though £20,000 buys much less. Economists call this fiscal drag: the same tax rules collect more as nominal pay rises. Nothing about the calculation changes, but the share of your pay that is taxable does.
The personal allowance is reduced once your adjusted net income goes above £100,000: you lose £1 of allowance for every £2 of income above that figure, so it reaches zero at £125,1402. Adjusted net income is total taxable income less pension contributions and Gift Aid, which is why pension contributions are the standard way to keep the allowance.
The taper makes each £2 earned between £100,000 and £125,140 cost 40% tax plus 40% on the £1 of allowance lost: an effective 60% income tax rate (62% with 2% NI). Someone on £110,000 keeps only £7,570 of allowance and pays £33,432 income tax, against £27,432 at £100,000, so the extra £10,000 of salary costs £6,000 in tax.
| Income | Allowance kept | Income tax (England) | Marginal rate incl. NI |
|---|---|---|---|
| £100,000 | £12,570 | £27,432 | 42% |
| £110,000 | £7,570 | £33,432 | 62% |
| £120,000 | £2,570 | £39,432 | 62% |
| £125,140 | £0 | £42,516 | 47% (taper ends) |
HMRC turns the allowance into a tax code by dropping the last digit and adding a letter: £12,570 becomes 1257, and L means you get the standard allowance, giving 1257L3. If your allowance is different, so is the number. Marriage Allowance recipients see 1383M (£13,830), transferors 1131N (£11,310), and someone with a £60 flat-rate expense allowance for a uniform gets 1263L. A K code means your untaxed income (a company car, say, or tax owed from an earlier year) exceeds the allowance, so a notional amount is added to your pay instead.
If your code has W1, M1 or X after it, the allowance is being applied per period rather than cumulatively (an emergency code), which can leave you paying the wrong amount if you started the job part-way through the year.
Most people never claim the personal allowance; it is applied automatically through PAYE using the tax code your employer receives from HMRC. The code spreads the allowance evenly across the tax year, which is why a monthly-paid employee sees the same tax deduction every month on a steady salary. Because PAYE is cumulative, if you work only part of the year you keep the allowance for the months you did not work: someone starting a job in October has already accrued six months of unused allowance, so their first payslip often shows a very small tax deduction or none at all.
If you are self-employed, the allowance is applied when you file your Self Assessment return rather than month by month, and it is set against your profits. If you have both employment and self-employment, the allowance is normally used against the employment income first through your tax code, and the rest of your profit is taxed from the basic-rate band upwards.
Savings interest and dividends have their own separate allowances (£1,000 of savings interest for a basic-rate taxpayer, £500 for a higher-rate taxpayer, plus a £500 dividend allowance), but any unused personal allowance can also be set against them. That is why someone with a small salary and significant savings income often pays no tax at all.
If you are married or in a civil partnership, one partner earns less than £12,570 and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer, the lower earner can transfer 10% of their allowance (£1,260) to the higher earner. That saves the couple up to £252 a year (20% of £1,260) and can be backdated up to four tax years4. The transfer is not available if the recipient pays higher-rate tax.
People registered blind or severely sight impaired get Blind Person's Allowance on top of the £12,570; it is uprated each April and can be transferred to a spouse or civil partner if you cannot use it all5. Separate from the personal allowance, most people also have a Personal Savings Allowance (£1,000 for basic-rate taxpayers, £500 for higher-rate) and a £500 dividend allowance, so modest savings interest and dividends are usually tax-free even when your salary uses up the £12,570.
The £12,570 personal allowance is set by the UK Parliament and is identical across all four nations, including for Scottish taxpayers. What differs in Scotland is the bands above it: a 19% starter rate on £12,571 to £16,537, then 20%, 21%, 42%, 45% and 48% bands6. The £100,000 taper applies in Scotland in the same way. Welsh rates are currently identical to England's.
Current tax-year thresholds used across this guide and calculator.
£12,570. It is the amount of income you can earn in the tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027) before income tax is charged, and it applies across the whole UK including Scotland.
No. The personal allowance is frozen at £12,570 for 2026/27, the same as every year since 2021/22. Because wages have risen while the allowance has not, a larger share of pay is taxable each year (fiscal drag).
£1,047.50 a month or £241.73 a week. PAYE spreads the £12,570 evenly across the year, so that is the amount of tax-free pay you get in each period on tax code 1257L.
Once adjusted net income goes above £100,000. You lose £1 for every £2 above that, so the allowance is halved at £112,570 and gone entirely at £125,140. Pension contributions and Gift Aid reduce adjusted net income and can restore it.
Yes, £12,570 is set UK-wide. Scotland only differs in the bands and rates applied above the allowance, starting with a 19% starter rate on the first £3,967 of taxable income.
1257L. The number is £12,570 with the last digit removed and the L means the standard allowance applies. S1257L is the Scottish version and C1257L the Welsh version.
The rates, thresholds and rules on this page are drawn from the official UK government sources below, using the confirmed 2026/27 figures. Each link opens the relevant HMRC or GOV.UK page in a new tab.
Verified against published UK government guidance for 2026/27.