The Salary Calculator

Plans for re-starting the economy

by Admin

It has been a turbulent few months for many of us, with jobs being cut, furloughing schemes, working from home and closure of many businesses (small and large). Last week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a number of measures which are designed to help us along the road to recovery. It is going to take several months (or even longer) and things may never quite be the same – but here are a few of the measures which have been announced:

A cut in VAT on hospitality – restaurants and hotels will see the VAT on their goods reduced from 20% to 5%. For consumers, it is possible that this will mean lower prices but businesses are under no obligation to pass this saving on. They may keep their prices the same and use the VAT saving to try to repair some of the damage caused by their enforced closure over the last few months, or to try to allow for fewer customers as social distancing regulations mean that they can’t seat as many people as before.

A temporary removal of stamp duty on house purchases under £500,000 – if you were planning to move house before March 2021, this may well save you a significant amount of money. Previously, any house sold for more than £125,000 attracted stamp duty (often thousands or tens of thousands of pounds) which the buyer had to pay on top of the purchase price. Until March of next year, the threshold has been increased to £500,000, in an attempt to encourage people to buy and re-energise the housing market.

A bonus paid to employers who retain furloughed employees – if an employer keeps an employee who was furloughed on the payroll until the end of January 2021, they will be eligible for a one-off £1000 bonus. This is to encourage employers to keep people on and prevent unemployment, even if business doesn’t pick up immediately now that lockdown has been loosened.

There were several schemes announced which are intended to encourage employers to employ 16-24 year olds.

A full run-down of the measures announced is available from the BBC.

Tags: budget, coronavirus, covid-19, Economy, house prices, houses, Jobs, recession, recovery, VAT

Receiving a pension AND employment income

by Admin

The Salary Calculator has had the Two Jobs calculator for a little over a year now. I have had a couple of people contact me and say that they haven’t been able to use it for their situation, which is that they are receiving one income as a pension but they have a second income from a job. The pension doesn’t have National Insurance deducted from it but the job does, and it wasn’t possible to reflect this in the calculator. However, this oversight has now been fixed!

On the Two Jobs calculator, the Additional Options tab now has two extra tick-boxes which you can use to indicate that either the first or second job is a pension (or indeed that they are both pensions). The calculator will then not deduct NI from the job that you say is actually a pension. On all other calculators, where you are only dealing with one income, you can just tick the “I do not pay National Insurance” box if this actually a pension.

Tags: Jobs, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, The Salary Calculator

New tool – Sick Pay Calculator

by Admin

With many people having to take time off work due to the current situation with COVID-19, I thought I would try to create a sick pay calculator. If you will be taking time off, and your employer’s policy states that you will receive reduced (or no) pay for your time off, the Sick Pay Calculator will try to estimate the effect on your take-home pay.

You can enter the number of days on a percentage of your normal pay (e.g. 50% for half pay), the number of days on Statutory Sick Pay (n.b. the calculator is not able to tell whether or not you are eligible for SSP, learn more from Citizens Advice), and the number of unpaid days. The calculator will use this information to estimate how your payslip will change.

Please note that different employers calculate things like unpaid leave in different ways, so the calculator’s results may differ from those on your payslip. Also, how much you will get paid for time off depends primarily on what your employer’s relevant policies state – you will need to know what you are entitled to before using the calculator.

Please let me know if you have any trouble using the calculator – I’ve tried to reduce the number of unexpected results, but it is possible with a lot of time off and with many options such as pensions and student loans applied that the answers given might be a bit unusual!

Tags: coronavirus, covid-19, HMRC, income tax, Jobs, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, Pensions, sick pay, student loans, The Salary Calculator, unpaid leave

New! Hours and days worked per week

by Admin

For quite some time now, people have been asking me to correct two little assumptions that the Salary Calculator makes:

1. The “Daily” results are based on a 5-day working week
2. The overtime calculations are based on a 37.5-hour working week (apart from on the hourly wage calculator)

I have now added these two things as options on the calculator. On the “Additional Options” tab you can choose the number of days worked per week, and the “Daily” results column will reflect what you choose. On the “Overtime” tab, you can change the number of hours in a normal week (i.e., not including overtime), and this will affect the overtime rates.

It’s only a small change, but hopefully some of you will find it useful! Head over to The Salary Calculator to check it out.

Tags: hourly wage, hours, Jobs, overtime, Pay As You Earn, The Salary Calculator, working week

New! Two Jobs Salary Calculator

by Admin

I have finally been able to deliver something that has been on my “to-do” list for several years – a salary calculator for when you have two jobs at the same time. If you are considering taking on a second job to help make ends meet, or if you have two part-time jobs rather than one full-time job, it isn’t easy to work out what your take-home pay will be. If you’d like to try it out and see what a difference an extra job could make, head over to the Two Jobs Salary Calculator.

All the usual options are there, such as pension contributions, bonuses and overtime, to help you see all the details in one place. You can use the calculator without a tax code, or with a single tax code for both jobs, or with individual tax codes for each job if you have been given them by HMRC.

It can be quite complicated to work out the tax and other deductions for those who are working two jobs, so I hope this will be useful to some of you. It was also quite difficult to find a way to display all the options (like pension contributions from both jobs) without making it too hard to use. I hope I have succeeded, I look forward to hearing from people who have used it.

Tags: careers, HMRC, income tax, Jobs, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, second job, student loans, tax rates, The Salary Calculator, two jobs