The Salary Calculator

New – see your tax broken down by tax rate

by Admin

I’ve had requests in the past from users of the site saying that it would be useful to see a breakdown of your income tax, showing how much of it was in which tax band. Well, it took a while to get round to it, but now you will see in the results table that if you hover the mouse over the tax deductions, you get a list showing you how much of that tax was at 20%, how much at 40%, etc.

Of course, for a lot of people this will just be at 20%. If you earn a little more, though, you’ll pay some tax at 40% and those who are fortunate enough to earn over £150,000 will be paying some tax at a rate of 45%.

I recognise that there’s a little more work to be done on this – sometimes you might see there’s a discrepancy of 1p in the values (this is just because of rounding up / down and is pretty hard to avoid), and at the moment it’s not possible to see a breakdown of tax when you’ve received a bonus. I know that bonus time is when a lot of people move up into a new tax threshold so I will work to add that in the future, I promise!

If you want to have a go and try it out, here’s where to go: The Salary Calculator

Tags: bonus, income tax, Pay As You Earn, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

General Election Salary Calculator

by Admin

As you may have noticed, there’s a General Election next month and the parties are all out campaigning. Since a major campaign point this time is personal taxation, I thought it would be interesting to compare how the main parties’ policies would affect take-home pay. You can try out the Election Salary Calculator here. This is a simplified version of the normal Salary Calculator, but if you enter your salary and a few other optional extras, it will estimate the differences in deductions for the 5 main national parties.

This is just an estimate, and not all of the details are available yet – I will update the calculator with more information as the parties provide it. I hope you find it interesting! Details of the changes are described below the results table. The BBC has a very good article explaining the parties’ positions on taxation and other policy areas.

Tags: 2015, election, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

Budget 2015

by Admin

The Chancellor gave his pre-election budget earlier today – announcing his plans for forthcoming years. With an election just around the corner, this budget is even more of a sales pitch than usual – most of the changes he announced would only come to pass if the Conservatives were to be in government for the next term.

From a personal taxation point of view, the most significant announcement was arguably the plan for the first £1,000 of interest earned on savings to be tax free, effective April 2016. This will allow almost everyone to pay no taxes on their savings interest (those with high incomes from elsewhere will have this £1,000 limit reduced, possibly to zero), but the amount saved each year for most people is likely to be only a few pounds – and at most £200. There is also a plan to raise the threshold for the higher rate tax (the point at which income tax increases from 20% to 40%) ahead of inflation – an effective tax break for those on good middle-class incomes.

The Salary Calculator has already been updated with the tax rates which take effect from April 2015 so you can see how your pay packet will change next month. You can also compare 2014 and 2015 tax rates side-by-side to see where the differences come in.

Tags: 2015, April 2015, budget, Economy, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

Salary Calculator downtime

by Admin

Anyone who has been trying to access The Salary Calculator over the last 24 hours or so will probably have had difficulty getting the site to load. There have been some technical issues at our hosting company which have affected the site (along with some other sites). They have been working hard to fix the problem and we believe everything should now be up and running.

Thank you for your patience with The Salary Calculator during this downtime!

Tags: The Salary Calculator

April 2015 tax rates applied

by Admin

From 6th April 2015, new tax thresholds and personal allowances will apply, and The Salary Calculator has been updated with these new values.

Although the default results are still for the current tax year, when you enter your details into the take home pay calculator, you will see a summary line at the bottom of the results showing how things will change from 6th April. Click on this line and you can see a side-by-side comparison of the 2014/15 and 2015/16 tax years, and a breakdown of how it will affect your take home pay. You can also choose 2015/16 in the tax year drop-down in the normal take home calculator.

The main change this year is an increase in the default personal allowance from £10,000 to £10,600 – which means you can earn an extra £600 without paying any income tax. The default tax code will change from 1000L to 1060L (if your tax code is different, it will probably change for next year to reflect the larger personal allowance). The Student Loan repayment threshold has also increased from £16,910 to £17,335, potentially saving those who are repaying their loans £38.25 per month (although this will also mean it takes longer to repay your loan).

Tags: April 2015, HMRC, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, student loans, tax rates, The Salary Calculator