The Salary Calculator

I read an interesting article this morning on the BBC News website about the phenomenon of people who are unemployed deciding to become self-employed rather than keep looking for “traditional” employment. Apparently, a significant number of people have found that it is difficult to find a job, but that they have been able to start and run promising businesses themselves – something they have found much more fulfilling than taking Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Our sister site Employed and Self Employed has a tax calculator you can use to see how much tax and National Insurance would be deducted from self employment profits, if you are thinking of starting your own business. There is also a more complex calculator if you already have a job but are thinking of becoming self-employed in your spare time – you can work out how much of your profits you would be able to keep hold of.

If you are unemployed and thinking of starting your own business, you may be eligible for some funds from the government to help you get started. More information is available here about the New Enterprise Allowance.

A new update to The Salary Calculator allows you to enter deductions which were previously not available. Among the usual options is one for Salary Sacrifice, if you have contractually agreed to reduce your salary by a certain amount in exchange for receiving some other benefit. There are also new options for pre-tax deductions such as Gift Aid and Give As You Earn and after-tax deductions which are just taken out of your payslip each month.

Salary Sacrifice is often used for pension contributions, but The Salary Calculator already has an option for Salary Sacrifice pensions under the “Pension” tab where you can enter a percentage of your salary to be deducted. If you prefer to enter the monthly (or annual) £ amount that you are sacrificing, you can leave the pension field blank and enter the £ amount in the “Salary Sacrifice” tab. Alternatively, you might be making a salary sacrifice for benefits other than a pension (or in addition to a pension) – in which case just enter the amount you’ve sacrificed into the new field.

The “Other Deductions” tab has two new fields on it. One is for pre-tax deductions, like Gift Aid or other charitable contributions like Give As You Earn. The second is for after-tax deductions – i.e. an amount deducted from your take-home pay each month with no impact on your tax or National Insurance.

Head over the The Salary Calculator to check out these new options. I hope you find these new options useful – if you have any feedback or thoughts (or suggestions for other things to be added), please let me know!

In response to a few requests, an Irish version of The Salary Calculator has been launched! This new site allows you to perform take-home pay calculations according to the tax laws in Ireland. As well as Irish Income Tax, there is also support for the Universal Social Charge (USC) and Pay-Related Social Insurance (PRSI), and pensions, tax credits and allowances.

Why not take a look at the Irish Salary Calculator and see how your take-home pay might change? You can also perform calculations for an hourly wage, and work out what salary you need to get the take-home pay you desire. Pro-rata calculations are also catered for. You can read about the calculations performed on this page about The Irish Salary Calculator.

At the moment, there aren’t as many options available as there are on the UK Salary Calculator. If you live in Ireland or pay Irish tax and would like new features added to The Salary Calculator, please let me know!

For many years, The Salary Calculator has allowed you to enter a percentage of your salary to be deducted as contributions to a pension. However, only employer (or occupational) pensions have been supported. Now, the calculator has been updated to allow you to specify whether your contributions are to an employer pension (as before), a salary sacrifice scheme, or a personal pension.

These three different types of pensions have different regulations applied to them, which means they affect your take-home pay in different ways. Your income tax, National Insurance contributions and even student loan deductions might be different depending on the type of pension scheme you are paying into. More information about the different pension types is on The Salary Calculator “About” page.

Choose the “Pension” tab on The Salary Calculator to see the new options and see how it affects your take-home pay!

I was interested to read an article on the BBC news website today about the new benefits cap, which was trying to estimate how much money someone needs to be able to live (albeit cheaply). As well as some examples of how people can save a bit of money with cheaper options, it was interesting to me to see things that I wouldn’t necessarily have considered when trying to work out my weekly spend.

For example, they say that the average family spends £9.50 a week on furniture. Now, obviously, most people don’t buy a new piece of furniture each week, and I can’t remember the last time I did – but it is expensive and you will need to budget for some such purchases over the year. You might think that if you were living on a budget you just wouldn’t buy furniture, but it does wear out and does need to be replaced, even if it is replaced with a cheaper, second-hand equivalent.

Also clothing – not something I spend money on regularly, but if you have a job interview you will need a suit – and you’ll have to save for many weeks at a couple of pounds a week to afford it. Things like socks will wear out, shirts will get damaged – if every penny counts, it will be difficult to get replacements, even if you shop in budget shops.

Anyway, check out the link above to read the article in more detail. You might spot somewhere that you could economise!