Who writes the content on SalaryTax UK?

SalaryTax is published institutionally rather than under individual bylines. Every calculator and explainer is built directly against primary sources from gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales, HMRC, and the Office for National Statistics, with the cited URL and retrieval date pinned in the calculator test fixtures. Readers verify what they read against the original statute or HMRC worked example, not against a contributor profile.

How often are the tax figures updated?

On a fixed annual calendar - ONS inflation and salary data refresh in January once the latest ASHE release is published, the next tax-year ruleset is prepared in March and deployed on 6 April, and any Autumn Statement rate changes are incorporated within 48 hours of the announcement. Out-of-cycle updates ship whenever a reader or HMRC reports a divergence we can reproduce against the primary source.

Do you use AI to generate calculator figures or guides?

No. Calculator logic, tax bands, thresholds, and worked examples are written by hand and reviewed against the cited HMRC or gov.uk source before they ship. Long-form guide prose is also human-written and reviewed. We publish a public correction at /corrections rather than silently rewriting any number that turns out to be wrong.

Is SalaryTax UK affiliated with HMRC or the UK government?

No. SalaryTax UK is an independent information site. We cite gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales, and HMRC publications as primary sources, but we are not endorsed by, partnered with, or affiliated to any UK government body. Public-sector tax rules and statistics that we surface remain under their original Open Government Licence v3.0.

Can I use SalaryTax UK as financial advice?

No. SalaryTax is an information tool, not a regulated financial-advice service, and we are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The calculators compute UK tax outcomes for the inputs you supply - they do not give personal recommendations on pensions, investments, IHT planning, or tax structuring. For personal advice, the gov.uk find-a-financial-adviser directory lists FCA-authorised firms.

How SalaryTax UK is researched, verified, and maintained

SalaryTax UK is published as an institution, not under individual bylines. This page documents the accountability stack behind every figure on the site - where the underlying numbers come from, how they are verified against HMRC published worked examples, when they are refreshed, how corrections are logged, and what the site explicitly does not do. UK tax is set by Acts of Parliament, statutory instruments, and HMRC guidance; the trustworthy thing to publish alongside it is the audit trail back to those sources, not a face.

Editorial standards

Every income tax band, National Insurance threshold, statutory pay rate, and economic figure on SalaryTax traces to a primary-source publication. That means HMRC and gov.uk for UK-wide tax, gov.scot for Scottish income tax, gov.wales for the Welsh Rate of Income Tax, the Office for National Statistics for CPI inflation and Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) salary distributions, Companies House for company-level data, and sector-specific institutional publishers (NHS Employers for Agenda for Change, the British Medical Association for doctors, the STPCD for teacher pay scales) for occupational benchmarks. We do not paraphrase secondary commentary as if it were primary. We do not generate numbers from a language model. If a figure does not have a citable public-sector URL, it does not ship.

The calculation engine

Every calculator is a pure TypeScript module under src/calculators/ with no network or storage I/O. Rates and thresholds are not hard-coded inside calculator logic - they come from a per-tax-year ruleset under src/data/tax/, one file per supported year, each of which is itself reviewable line-by-line against the cited gov.uk source. The full test suite (Vitest) covers every UK region, every tax band edge, every student-loan plan, and pension sacrifice interactions, alongside golden-fixture regression tests pinned to HMRC published worked examples with the original URL and retrieval date locked into the test file. Continuous integration runs the entire suite on every push - numeric drift fails the build before deploy. The methodology page documents the same in more detail.

Data provenance index

Every dataset surfaced anywhere on the site has a public provenance entry at /data-sources with the authoritative source URL, the date we retrieved it, and the cadence on which we refresh it. The open-source repository also publishes the developer-facing copy of the same index as src/data/sources.md. A reader, journalist, or auditor can walk from any figure on the site to the gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales, or ONS publication that produced it, in a single hop.

Update cadence

Annual maintenance follows a fixed calendar so freshness is predictable rather than ad hoc:

January - ONS CPI annual averages, ASHE median salary, and ASHE percentile data are refreshed within two weeks of the latest ONS release.
March - the next tax-year ruleset is built and tested ahead of the 6 April changeover, including bands, thresholds, NI rates, statutory pay caps, and dividend allowance.
October / November - any Autumn Statement rate changes are incorporated within 48 hours of the speech, with sourcing pinned to the relevant HMRC policy paper.
Continuous - a weekly automated link-check workflow scans every outbound gov.uk and ONS URL on the site and opens an issue when one breaks, so cited sources stay reachable.

Verification methodology

Each calculator is regression-tested against HMRC's own worked examples. Where HMRC publishes a sample payslip, P60, or self-assessment calculation showing what a person on a specific gross salary should owe in income tax, National Insurance, and student-loan repayments, that example becomes a golden-fixture test - if our engine ever drifts from the HMRC published figure, the build fails. Tests pin the source URL and retrieval date so future auditors can trace each fixture back to the published HMRC example it came from. Pre-rendered per-amount pages (e.g. take-home for £35,000 in Scotland) inherit the same regression coverage because they call the same pure functions.

Correction policy

We maintain a public corrections log at /corrections. Any reader who finds a number that diverges from a published HMRC figure can email the address below with the calculator URL, the inputs they used, the figure we returned, and the figure they believe is correct (with the source). Confirmed reports are acknowledged within 48 hours and the underlying ruleset is fixed within five working days, with the change logged immutably. We do not silently rewrite calculator outputs - every numeric change ties to a dated git commit and a primary-source URL.

Independence and funding

SalaryTax UK is operated independently. Tax-calculator and tax-data pages do not carry affiliate links - no broker, bank, accountancy practice, pension provider, or umbrella company pays us to influence what the calculators return or how a tax rule is explained. We do not take paid placements that affect methodology. Where the site is funded by display advertising in the future, the advertising network is disclosed and is not permitted to alter content. If a relationship is ever added that could be perceived as a conflict, it will be disclosed on the page where it applies and on the editorial policy.

Technical infrastructure

Every change ships through git. The full revision history of every tax figure, guide paragraph, and calculator function is preserved as a dated commit - readers, journalists, or HMRC can audit precisely when a figure changed and why. Continuous-integration gates on every push run strict TypeScript checks, the full unit-test suite, a production build, a Playwright end-to-end suite across four device profiles, a weekly link-check workflow against every outbound source URL, an orphan-page audit, and a weekly PageSpeed Insights snapshot. A numeric or build regression blocks deploy before the public site is affected.

Compliance and licensing

Site content (methodology narrative, calculator interfaces, guide prose, derived statistics presentation) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Underlying tax rules and economic statistics remain under the public-sector licences set by their publishers - predominantly the Open Government Licence v3.0 from HMRC, ONS, gov.scot, and gov.wales. When reusing SalaryTax content, attribute "SalaryTax (salarytax.uk)".

Limitations - what SalaryTax is not

SalaryTax UK is an information tool. It is not a regulated financial-advice service. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The calculators do not provide personal recommendations on tax structuring, pension planning, investment selection, inheritance planning, or any activity that requires FCA authorisation. For personal financial advice that takes individual circumstances into account, see the gov.uk find a financial adviser directory, which lists FCA-authorised firms. For complex tax situations (residency, non-dom, share schemes, complex partnership structures, IHT and trust planning), a Chartered Tax Adviser (CIOT) or a chartered accountant (ICAEW, ACCA, or ICAS) is the appropriate professional to consult.

Contact

For corrections, factual queries, or methodology questions, contact contact@salarytax.uk. Privacy and consent practice is documented on the privacy page; a deeper institutional account of editorial process is at editorial policy; the per-figure provenance audit is at data sources; the full corrections register is at corrections; the calculation methodology is at methodology; and a general project overview is at about.

Frequently asked questions

Who writes the content on SalaryTax UK?: SalaryTax is published institutionally rather than under individual bylines. Every calculator and explainer is built directly against primary sources from gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales, HMRC, and the Office for National Statistics, with the cited URL and retrieval date pinned in the calculator test fixtures. Readers verify what they read against the original statute or HMRC worked example, not against a contributor profile.
How often are the tax figures updated?: On a fixed annual calendar - ONS inflation and salary data refresh in January once the latest ASHE release is published, the next tax-year ruleset is prepared in March and deployed on 6 April, and any Autumn Statement rate changes are incorporated within 48 hours of the announcement. Out-of-cycle updates ship whenever a reader or HMRC reports a divergence we can reproduce against the primary source.
Do you use AI to generate calculator figures or guides?: No. Calculator logic, tax bands, thresholds, and worked examples are written by hand and reviewed against the cited HMRC or gov.uk source before they ship. Long-form guide prose is also human-written and reviewed. We publish a public correction at /corrections rather than silently rewriting any number that turns out to be wrong.
Is SalaryTax UK affiliated with HMRC or the UK government?: No. SalaryTax UK is an independent information site. We cite gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales, and HMRC publications as primary sources, but we are not endorsed by, partnered with, or affiliated to any UK government body. Public-sector tax rules and statistics that we surface remain under their original Open Government Licence v3.0.
Can I use SalaryTax UK as financial advice?: No. SalaryTax is an information tool, not a regulated financial-advice service, and we are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The calculators compute UK tax outcomes for the inputs you supply - they do not give personal recommendations on pensions, investments, IHT planning, or tax structuring. For personal advice, the gov.uk find-a-financial-adviser directory lists FCA-authorised firms.