£40,000 after tax — UKJobNow salary calculator

What this calculator does

There is a number in your contract, and there is a number that arrives in your bank account. On a £35,000 salary the gap between them is around £8,700 a year — roughly a quarter of the headline figure.

This calculator closes that gap. Enter the salary from your contract and it shows what actually lands in your account, with a full account of where every pound in between went.

Using it

You only need one number to get an answer. The other three fields refine it.

Gross annual salary

Your pay before anything is taken off — the figure in your contract or job advert. On a payslip it is usually labelled Gross pay. Enter it as an annual figure; if your payslip shows a monthly number, multiply by twelve. Do not subtract anything first — working out the subtractions is the calculator's job.

Gross pay sits at the top, before anything is taken off. Net pay at the bottom is what we work out for you.

Student loan

The plan you are on has nothing to do with how much you borrowed — it depends on where and when you studied. Plan 1 is England and Wales before September 2012, and Northern Ireland. Plan 2 is 2012 to 2023. Plan 4 is Scotland. Plan 5 is from August 2023. A Postgraduate Loan is separate, repaid at 6% on a lower threshold.

If you are unsure, sign in to your student loan account on GOV.UK — it states your plan. The thresholds differ by thousands of pounds, so the wrong plan can move your answer by hundreds a year.

Pension and where you live

Enter your own pension contribution only, as a percentage. Auto-enrolment means most employees pay at least 5%. Your employer's contribution never passes through your payslip, so including it would make the answer wrong.

Scotland sets its own income tax rates and has six bands where the rest of the UK has three. National Insurance is UK-wide, so only the income tax part of your answer changes.

A worked example

That is £2,195 a month. The order matters: the pension comes off first, which drops the income the taxman looks at from £35,000 to £33,250. So a £1,750 pension contribution only costs about £1,400 of take-home pay — the rest was money that would have gone to tax anyway.

National Insurance, by contrast, is charged on the full £35,000 and ignores the pension entirely under a standard workplace scheme.

The four deductions

Pension comes off before income tax is worked out, which is why it costs you less than the headline percentage.

The Personal Allowance

The first £12,570 you earn carries no income tax. Above £100,000 it is taken away at £1 for every £2 you earn, disappearing entirely at £125,140.

That creates a band between £100,000 and £125,140 where every extra pound is effectively taxed at around 60%. It is why a pay rise in that range can feel almost invisible, and why pension contributions are unusually valuable there.

Income tax is charged in slices

This causes more confusion than anything else, so it is worth stating plainly: tax bands apply to slices of income, not to your whole salary.

Each slice is taxed at its own rate. Crossing into a higher band only affects the slice above the threshold.

National Insurance and student loan

National Insurance has its own thresholds, starting at £6,708 rather than the Personal Allowance. It is charged at 8% up to £50,284 and then drops to 2% — the opposite shape to income tax, which is why it takes a larger share of middle incomes than of very high ones.

Student loan repayments are 9% of everything above your plan's threshold. What you owe makes no difference to the monthly amount — only your income does.

Why your payslip may differ

If our figure and your payslip disagree, it is almost always one of these.

• Your tax code is not standard — by far the most common cause. We assume the normal code with the full Personal Allowance.
• Salary sacrifice. If your pension runs that way it reduces National Insurance too, and you take home slightly more than we show.
• Benefits in kind such as a company car or private medical cover, usually collected through your tax code.
• Other deductions — season ticket loans, cycle-to-work, union subscriptions.
• Irregular pay. Real payroll works out National Insurance per pay period, not annually, so variable pay drifts from our figure.

Using it to decide things

Comparing two job offers? Compare take-home figures rather than headline salaries, and enter the same pension percentage for both. Offers £3,000 apart on paper can end up much closer, and occasionally the lower one wins.

Working out what a pay rise is worth? Run both salaries and compare the monthly figures. A £2,000 rise is not £167 a month — depending on your band and student loan it is more likely to be around £100.

Deciding a pension rate? Try 5%, then 8%, then 10% and watch the take-home figure move. The cost is always less than the contribution, because the money would have been taxed.

What this calculator cannot do

It is built for employees paid a regular salary through PAYE. It will not give a reliable answer if you are self-employed, paid through your own limited company, or working through an umbrella company — all three are taxed under different rules.

It does not model bonuses, overtime, commission, dividends, rental income or benefits in kind, and it assumes you are under State Pension age. Above all it cannot know your tax code, which is the single biggest source of variation between our figure and a real payslip.

Every rate here comes from GOV.UK and is listed with its source on our methodology page. The current figures are set out on the rates and thresholds page.

Questions people ask

What is gross salary, and where do I find mine?

Gross salary is your pay before anything is taken off — the figure in your contract or job advert. It is not the amount that reaches your bank account.

On a payslip it usually appears as "Gross pay" or "Total pay". If your payslip shows a monthly figure, multiply it by 12 to get the annual number this calculator wants.

Why is my take-home pay lower than this calculator says?

The most common reason is your tax code. We assume a standard code with the full Personal Allowance. If yours is different — because you underpaid tax in a previous year, have a company car, or have a second job — you will pay more than we show.

Other common causes: student loan repayments you did not select, a higher pension contribution than you entered, salary sacrifice schemes, or deductions like season ticket loans and union subscriptions.

What is the Personal Allowance and why does mine disappear?

The Personal Allowance is the amount you can earn each year without paying income tax. For most people it is £12,570.

Once you earn more than £100,000 it starts being taken away — you lose £1 of allowance for every £2 you earn above that line. By £125,140 it is gone completely. This is why the effective tax rate between £100,000 and £125,140 is much higher than the headline 40%, and why a pay rise in that band can feel almost invisible.

Does moving into the 40% band mean all my income is taxed at 40%?

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about UK tax. Tax is charged in slices. Only the part of your income above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate — everything below it is still taxed at the lower rates.

If you earn £55,000, you do not pay 40% on £55,000. You pay nothing on the first £12,570, 20% on the next £37,700, and 40% only on the remaining £4,730.

Which student loan plan am I on?

It depends on where and when you started your course:

• Plan 1 — English or Welsh student who started before September 2012, or a Northern Irish student
• Plan 2 — English or Welsh student who started between September 2012 and July 2023
• Plan 4 — Scottish student
• Plan 5 — English student who started in or after August 2023
• Postgraduate Loan — a master's or doctoral loan, repaid at 6% rather than 9%

If you are not sure, sign in to your student loan account on GOV.UK — it tells you. You can be on an undergraduate plan and a Postgraduate Loan at the same time, and repay both.

Should I enter my pension contribution?

Yes, if you are in a workplace pension — which you probably are, because auto-enrolment made it the default. The minimum employee contribution is usually 5% of qualifying earnings.

Enter your own contribution only, not your employer's. Your employer's contribution does not come out of your pay, so it does not change your take-home figure.

Why is National Insurance calculated differently from income tax?

They are separate systems that happen to be collected together. National Insurance has its own thresholds, its own rates, and — importantly — the Personal Allowance does not apply to it. You start paying NI at a lower level of earnings than you start paying income tax.

NI also falls to 2% above the upper earnings limit, while income tax rises to 40%. That is why very high earners pay proportionally less NI than middle earners.

Why does the answer change when I select Scotland?

Scotland sets its own income tax rates and thresholds on earned income, and has six bands rather than three. Scottish taxpayers generally pay slightly less than the rest of the UK on lower incomes and more on higher incomes.

National Insurance is set UK-wide, so that part of your deduction does not change.

Is this calculator accurate enough to budget with?

For a steady salary with a standard tax code, it should be within a few pounds a month of your actual payslip. It is a good basis for budgeting or comparing job offers.

It will be less accurate if your pay varies month to month, because real payroll works out National Insurance per pay period rather than annually. It also does not model bonuses, overtime, benefits in kind or income from anywhere else.

How often are the figures updated?

Rates change at the start of each tax year on 6 April, and occasionally at a Budget. Every calculator on this site shows the tax year it applies to and the date the figures were last checked against GOV.UK.

All the statutory figures live in one file, so when they are updated every calculator and every reference table changes at the same time. One page cannot be current while another is stale.