Compare Tax Years Calculator: Take-Home Pay Year by Year

Who this calculator is for

This tool shows how tax changes have affected your pay packet over time. It is for:

• Employees checking whether they are really better off after a Budget.
• People writing about or researching UK take-home pay.
• Anyone curious why their net pay shifted even though their salary did not.

You enter one gross salary. The calculator shows what you would have taken home in each tax year it holds. That makes the comparison like-for-like.

Why take-home pay changes between tax years

Two forces move your take-home pay over time. The first is direct rate and band changes announced at a Budget. For example, the main rate of employee National Insurance was cut in stages. It fell from 12% in early 2023 to 8% by 2026/27. The second, quieter force is fiscal drag. The Personal Allowance and the tax thresholds are frozen. Your pay rises with inflation, so a larger slice of your income is dragged into tax. You keep a smaller percentage of it even though no rate "changed". The Personal Allowance and higher-rate threshold have been frozen for several years. That is why many people feel worse off despite pay rises.

What this calculator shows

Enter a gross salary and pick two tax years. You will see:

• The take-home pay for each year.
• A full side-by-side breakdown of Income Tax and National Insurance.
• The difference between the two years, both per year and per month.

A table underneath lists every tax year we hold at that same salary. It lets you spot the trend at a glance. Choose Scotland if you are a Scottish taxpayer. The bands there differ from the rest of the UK.

2023/24 vs 2026/27 - the National Insurance effect

Between these two years the Income Tax rules are identical. The Personal Allowance is £12,570 in both. The higher-rate threshold is £50,270 and the additional-rate threshold is £125,140. Because nothing in Income Tax changed, the comparison cleanly isolates the one thing that did. That is employee National Insurance. In 2023/24 the main Class 1 rate was 12% from April. It was cut to 10% from 6 January 2024. By 2026/27 it is 8%. That lower rate means most employees keep more of the same salary today than they did in 2023/24.

We show the 2023/24 National Insurance at a blended annual main rate of 11.5%. That is nine months at 12% plus three months at 10%. HMRC itself used this basis for company directors that year. It is the fairest single figure for a full tax year.

A worked example

Take a £35,000 salary with no pension. The Income Tax is the same in both years, £4,486, because the bands are frozen. National Insurance is where they part company. It is about £2,579 in 2023/24 (at 11.5%) versus £1,794 in 2026/27 (at 8%). Take-home is roughly £27,935 in 2023/24 and £28,720 in 2026/27. That is around £785 more a year in 2026/27, or about £65 a month. The saving grows with salary, up to the £50,270 ceiling. That is because the cut applies to more of your pay.

What has not changed - and why that still costs you

It is easy to assume that frozen tax bands mean a frozen tax bill. The opposite is true once your pay rises. The Personal Allowance is stuck at £12,570 and the higher-rate threshold at £50,270. So a pay rise that simply keeps pace with inflation pushes more of your income above each threshold. Say your salary creeps from just under £50,270 to just over it. You start paying 40% on the excess for the first time. Even when headline rates fall, fiscal drag can quietly claw some of the benefit back. This calculator lets you test that. Compare the same person at different salaries across years.

How employee National Insurance changed, year by year

The main rate of Class 1 National Insurance for employees moved fast. Few taxes have shifted more in such a short span. That is why it drives most of the difference this calculator shows. The main rate applies to earnings between the Primary Threshold and the Upper Earnings Limit. In broad terms it ran as follows:

The thresholds themselves, £12,570 to £50,270, stayed put throughout. The whole change is in the rate. 2023/24 spanned two rates. This calculator therefore uses the blended 11.5% annual figure for that year, then the flat 8% for 2026/27.

What to do if a frozen-threshold year leaves you worse off

Does the comparison show you keeping a smaller share of your pay over time? The usual cause is fiscal drag rather than a rate rise. A few moves can claw some of it back:

• Pay more into a pension. This reduces your taxable income. With salary sacrifice it cuts your National Insurance too. It can keep you under a threshold such as £50,270, or the £100,000 Personal Allowance cliff.
• Claim any allowances you are due. Marriage Allowance and tax relief on work expenses both lift your effective Personal Allowance.
• Check your tax code is correct. A wrong code is the most common cause of overpaying.

The calculator helps you see the prize. It shows how much take-home a threshold-aware change is actually worth in each year.

How we keep the figures accurate

Each tax year on this site is driven by a single, dated set of rates and thresholds. We verify these against gov.uk, the House of Commons Library and, for Scotland, gov.scot. The take-home maths is identical across every year. Only the rate set changes. Any difference you see reflects a real change in the rules, never a quirk of the sum. As future Budgets change the numbers, we add new years and the comparison grows.

Common misunderstandings

• "My salary did not change, so my take-home should not either." Rate and threshold changes can move your net pay even on an unchanged salary.
• "Frozen thresholds mean no extra tax." That only holds if your pay is also frozen. Otherwise fiscal drag increases your effective tax rate.
• "This shows my exact payslip." It is a clean PAYE estimate. Your payslip may include student loans, benefits in kind or a non-standard tax code.

Beyond National Insurance - other things that move take-home

National Insurance is the headline change between the years on offer here. But take-home pay can shift for several other reasons. A like-for-like comparison helps you separate them out:

• A tax code change. A new benefit in kind, or the collection of a past underpayment, alters your Personal Allowance. Your net pay changes with it.
• Student loans. Starting or finishing repayments changes your deductions by 9% of income above the plan threshold. For postgraduate loans it is 6%.
• Pensions. Beginning pension contributions, or moving to salary sacrifice, reduces taxable pay.
• Scotland. Scottish bands and rates differ and have changed at their own pace. Two Scottish years can diverge even when the rest-of-UK figures would not.

This calculator holds the salary fixed. So anything it shows is down to the tax rules of each year, not a change in your own circumstances. That makes it a clean way to see what policy alone did to your pay.

A note on accuracy

This is an estimate for employees paid through PAYE under a standard tax code. It covers Income Tax and Class 1 National Insurance, plus an optional pension contribution. It does not include student loan repayments, benefits in kind or other payslip-specific deductions. For a complete picture of a single year, use the salary calculator. To compare two different salaries rather than two years, use the salary comparison calculator. And to see what a raise really adds after tax, use the pay rise calculator.

Who should use this calculator

Compares your tax on the same salary across different tax years, which is how you see what freezes and threshold changes have actually done to you. Rates rarely change; thresholds change constantly, and the effect is quieter but larger.

Run the same salary across several years and the pattern of fiscal drag becomes visible: more tax on identical earnings, purely because the thresholds stood still while wages rose. It is the most concrete way to see a stealth tax, because it isolates the policy effect from any change in your own pay.

What this calculator assumes

• The same gross salary is taxed under each year’s rates, bands and allowances.
• Income Tax and National Insurance are both included.
• The comparison isolates the effect of policy changes, holding your salary constant.
• Selecting a region applies that nation’s bands for each year.

Limitations — what it does not cover

• Inflation, which means an identical salary buys less each year regardless of tax — the real erosion is larger than the tax change alone.
• Your actual pay history, which did not stay flat.
• Other changes — dividend and savings allowances have fallen sharply and affect many people more than the bands.
• Student loan thresholds, which move on their own timetable.
• Benefit and childcare thresholds, also frozen and producing their own drag.
• Future years, which depend on policy not yet set.