The Salary Calculator

Tax codes added to The Salary Calculator

by Admin

After a great many requests from users of the site, I’ve finally added support for tax codes to The Salary Calculator. If you know what your tax code is, you can now use it on the take home pay calculator, hourly wage calculator and the required salary calculator to get a more accurate indication of your take home pay.

Tax codes exist because in some circumstances HMRC may adjust your personal allowance, often because of benefits like a company car or private healthcare. They do this by providing your employer with a tax code which indicates what your personal allowance should be.

The usual effect of such an adjustment would be to lower your personal allowance, meaning that you pay tax on more of your income. If you receive benefits such as private healthcare or a company car through your employer, you pay more tax on your salary so that the value of these benefits is also taxed.

Tax codes usually indicate the personal allowance by including a number which should be multiplied by 10 and have £5 added to it to make the personal allowance – e.g. the standard code 647L indicates a personal allowance of £6,475.

• L, P, Y and T codes indicate the personal allowance to be assigned as described above
• K codes indicate the amount by which the taxable income should be increased, if you owe tax on other earnings which should have been taxed
• A BR code indicates you pay 20% basic rate tax on all income
• A D0 code indicates you pay 40% tax on all income
• An NT code indicates you pay no tax

In most cases your tax code will stay the same if you change jobs, so now you can use The Salary Calculator to get a more accurate indication of what a pay rise or a new job would mean to you each month!

Tags: HMRC, income tax, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, tax rates

20% VAT from 4th January 2011

by Admin

As you are probably aware, in June this year the Chancellor announced in his emergency budget that VAT (Value Added Tax) would increase from 17.5% to 20% from the 4th January 2011. This will mean a small increase in the cost of most goods and services, as suppliers will have to increase the price they charge to cover the extra VAT they are having to pay to the Government.

Although a lot of people wait until the January sales before making a large purchase, in some cases you might find that it’s worthwhile to buy before the end of the year so that you only pay the lower 17.5% VAT. However, bear in mind that the amount of VAT increase is only small (a little over 2%) compared to the kind of discounts often offered in January sales.

For large purchases, such as a new car, the VAT increase could lead to a significant increase in price so it is worth checking what the VAT increase means for you. Fortunately, over at our sister site The VAT Calculator we have created a simple tool that shows you how much more something will cost if you buy it after the VAT increase. Just enter the current cost (including VAT) and see what the cost changes to with 20% VAT – try out the 20% VAT comparison calculator.

You can learn more about VAT by reading the information here.

Tags: 2011, April 2011, January 2011, tax rates, The VAT Calculator, value added tax, VAT

Emergency Budget Update

by Admin

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer gave the coalition government’s first Budget today, within 50 days of the election as promised. There were a great many changes, most of which will take place from April 2011, so I have added a new row to The Salary Calculator to give an indication of what the impact might be.

Unfortunately, a lot of the figures won’t be confirmed until towards the end of this year, so I have had to make some estimates based on what was described in the Emergency Budget report. For those who want to know, details of the figures I’ve used are below. For those who don’t – you can go straight to the “April 2011” row of the Salary Calculator for April 2011 values.

Another change announced in the Budget was an increase in standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 20% effective from 4th January 2011. The VAT Calculator has also been updated so you can see what a difference this will make to purchases.

The calculations for the April 2011 values in The Salary Calculator are based on the following assumptions. Under 65 personal allowance increased to £7,475, over 65 allowance increased to £9,940, over 75 allowance increased to £10,090. Threshold of 40% tax lowered to £35,000 from £37,400. National Insurance rates increase from 11% to 12% for basic and 1% to 2% for additional, as set out by the previous government’s budget. National Insurance basic rate threshold increased to £7,475, additional rate lowered to £42,875. All other values unchanged.

Edit (5th January 2011): The values above have been updated with the latest information from the Treasury and the April 2011 calculations have been updated in line with these. The Salary Calculator will be updated again with final values in early Spring 2011, following the budget update.

Tags: 20% VAT, April 2011, budget, coalition budget, Economy, election, emergency budget, HMRC, income tax, June 2010 budget, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, tax rates, The Salary Calculator, VAT

The Salary Calculator goes mobile!

by Admin

The mobile version of The Salary Calculator has been launched – a smaller version of the take home pay calculator, suitable for smart phones (and hopefully some older phones too) is now available – The Salary Calculator Mobile.

Store this link in your phone for when you need to check calculations and you’re not near a computer or you only have mobile internet. It’s been designed to fit easily onto a mobile screen and be quicker to download than the normal site. If you have any problems or find that it is not displaying correctly on your phone I would be very interested to know the details – please email with details of the phone you are using and the problem you are having.

Tags: cell phone, income tax, mobile, mobile salary calculator, mobile site, mobile tax calculator, Pay As You Earn, The Salary Calculator

Coalition pledges to affect tax

by Admin

So we’ve got a new, coalition government and they have published the details of the agreements which were reached between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. As you can see in the linked article, campaign pledges from both parties were included in the agreement, reflecting the compromises necessary.

They have promised that a new budget will be announced within 50 days, which will include changes to PAYE taking effect from April 2011. These changes will include increasing the income tax personal allowance to reduce taxes for low and middle earners (although not immediately the full increase to £10,000 the Lib Dems wanted), but the employee National Insurance threshold changes the Conservatives put in their manifesto will not be included. However Labour’s planned increase in employer National Insurance will not go ahead, pleasing Conservative supporters.

Full details will not be available until the promised emergency budget, but I promise to make available as soon as possible any relevant changes to The Salary Calculator!

Tags: April 2011, budget, Economy, election, HMRC, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, personal allowance, recession, recovery, tax rates, The Salary Calculator