The Salary Calculator

April 2020 calculations

by Admin

The Salary Calculator has been updated with the tax rates which currently stand to take effect from 6th April 2020. I say “currently”, because there is a Budget taking place on Wednesday 11th March and it is possible that some changes to tax rates or allowances will be announced. If this is the case, the calculator will be updated with the latest values as soon as possible following the Budget.

At the moment, no changes to the tax-free personal allowance or income tax rates have been announced (apart from in Scotland, where some tax thresholds have been increased slightly). However, the threshold for when you start paying National Insurance has increased, meaning that National Insurance contributions will be reduced by up to £104 per year.

Those repaying their undergraduate student loans will also find that the repayment threshold has increased – for Plan 1 it will be £19,390, and Plan 2 £26,575 per year. Although this increase will reduce the payments you make in each payslip, it will of course mean that it takes longer to repay your loan.

If you’d like to see how the changes will affect you, head over to The Salary Calculator and remember to choose 2020/21 from the Tax Year drop-down box.

Tags: April 2020, budget, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, personal allowance, student loans, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

New! Taxable cash allowances

by Admin

For some time now, The Salary Calculator has allowed you to enter the value of any taxable benefits that you receive (such as private health insurance, or a company car). These are things that your employer pays for and you get the benefit of, and therefore you pay tax on the value of these benefits even though you don’t receive any extra cash. I have had a lot of people contact me asking about a similar option, but this time for when your employer pays you extra cash so that you can pay for something yourself – a common one was a car allowance (as opposed to a company car) or a mobile phone allowance.

This option has finally been added to the calculator, on the Taxable Benefits tab. If you receive such an allowance, enter the value of it into the “cash allowances” option, and choose whether you receive this amount annually, monthly or weekly. Cash allowances are treated differently from benefits in kind in two main ways – firstly, they are extra cash so your take-home pay will increase despite the extra tax, and secondly, National Insurance is deducted as well as income tax.

You can also choose, on the Pension tab, whether your employer includes the value of your cash allowances when working out your pension contributions.

If you receive a cash allowance (or have been offered one) and would like to see what difference it would make, try it out on The Salary Calculator!

Tags: benefits in kind, cash allowances, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, Pensions, taxable benefits, The Salary Calculator

2019 General Election Calculator

by Admin

A General Election is taking place in the UK on 12th December, and all the main parties have released their manifestos – most of which have some policies which would affect your take-home pay, if they were to be elected. It’s a small part of the puzzle, but to help you try to figure it out, the 2019 Election Calculator has been created – this attempts to show you what your take-home pay would look like if each party came to power.

Some parties have proposed only small changes, and others have much larger plans. The calculator has had to make some assumptions, as the parties don’t always provide all the detail – anything that isn’t specified in a manifesto has been left as it currently is.

It is also worth noting that the parties also have policies which affect other areas of tax (such as VAT, inheritance tax, capital gains tax etc), and other benefits such as free childcare, which means that your finances are likely to be affected by things not considered by this calculator. If you’d like to give it a go, please head over to the 2019 Election Calculator – and let me know if you think anything is missing!

Calculators from previous elections have been archived:

• 2017 Election Calculator
• 2015 Election Calculator
• 2010 Election Calculator

Tags: 2019, 50% tax, election, general election, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, Pensions, personal allowance, tax rates, The Salary Calculator

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

April 2019 tax rates

by Admin

The Salary Calculator has been updated with the tax rates which will take effect from 6th April 2019. There is a significant increase in the tax-free Personal Allowance from £11,850 to £12,500 per year, and outside of Scotland the threshold from 20% basic rate to 40% higher rate income tax has been increased to £50,000. Scottish tax thresholds are different from the rest of the UK, current information suggests that they will not increase as much as the UK rates will.

There have also been increases in the thresholds for Plan 1 and Plan 2 Student Loan repayments, so those paying off their loans will find their repayments lowered in the new year.

You can try out the April 2019 tax rates for yourself by choosing “2019 / 20” in the Tax Year drop-down on The Salary Calculator. You can also see a side-by-side comparison of 2018 and 2019 with the 2018 and 2019 income tax comparison page.

The calculator has been updated with the best information currently available – if any of the details change before the start of the tax year the calculator will be updated to reflect those changes.

Tags: 2019, April 2019, budget, income tax, national insurance, Pay As You Earn, pension, personal allowance, student loan, student loans, tax rates, The Salary Calculator