The Salary Calculator

New pension options

by Admin

A while ago, I considered adding an option to the calculator allowing you to enter the amount in £ that you contribute each month, rather than the percentage. I thought this would be useful for people whose employers didn’t use their salary as the basis for the pension contributions but instead “pensionable pay” or something similar. I never got round to it because I thought it was too much of a niche and would make the calculator too confusing. However, the current Coronavirus situation with people being put on furlough made me realise that more people would be affected by this than usual, so I have added this option.

I had an email from a visitor to the site who said that his pension contributions in furlough were based on his full salary, not his reduced, furlough pay. As such, the percentage he was entering was giving the wrong deduction when applied to the reduced pay. To combat this, I have now added the option to switch from a percentage input to a £ input. Enter the amount you contribute, choose the pay period, select what kind of pension you have, and then the calculator will use this amount as your pension contribution. To make this even easier, on the Furlough Calculator you can enter the percentage as usual but tick the “Don’t reduce pension” option, in which case the calculator will automatically apply the pension contributions from your full salary to your reduced salary.

People who contribute to a personal pension (i.e., not through their employer) might also find it easier to use the £ amount option, as it may be easier than calculating the percentage.

Tags: coronavirus, covid-19, furlough, pension, Pensions, The Salary Calculator

Update to Salary Sacrifice options

by Admin

The Salary Calculator has had an option for “Salary Sacrifice” (where you give up some of your pay in return for some benefit like a cycle to work scheme) for some time. I have just made a small update to this tab because there are in fact two kinds of salary sacrifice – for most schemes, the sacrificed salary only reduces your National Insurance contributions, but a few schemes are tax-exempt and therefore also reduce the amount of income tax you pay. Now, you will see that there are two options on the Salary Sacrifice tab – one for NI only sacrifice and one for tax-exempt sacrifice.

If you take part in one of these schemes, enter the amount you sacrifice and whether that is monthly, weekly or yearly into the option that applies to your scheme. If you are not sure, check the details of your scheme or ask your employer (or compare the results of the calculations with your payslip). If you are a member of multiple schemes you can put the total sacrifice in the relevant option, and if you are a member of some NI only schemes and some tax-exempt ones you can put the relevant values in each option.

n.b. For salary sacrifice pensions and childcare vouchers you should continue to use the dedicated Pension and Childcare Voucher tabs, because the calculations are slightly different.

If you’d like to try it out, head on over to The Salary Calculator!

Tags: income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, salary sacrifce, The Salary Calculator