Editorial Policy

SalaryTax exists to give UK earners a fast, accurate, and auditable view of what lands in their bank account after HMRC takes its share. This page describes how we produce, verify, and maintain every number on the site so that you can decide how much weight to place on what you read here.

Institutional trust, not personal authority

We deliberately do not publish per-article author bios. UK tax is set by Acts of Parliament, secondary legislation, and HMRC guidance — none of which depends on which contributor happened to type up our notes that quarter. Every calculation on SalaryTax cites the underlying gov.uk or gov.scot source so readers verify against the statute, not against a face.

How we source figures

Every income tax band, National Insurance threshold, student loan plan, dividend rate, and personal allowance comes from one of:

• gov.uk primary publications (Income Tax rates, NI letters, HMRC guidance manuals)
• gov.scot for Scottish Income Tax bands
• gov.wales for the Welsh Rate of Income Tax
• HMRC worked examples (used as regression tests for our calculators)
• Office for National Statistics (ASHE, CPI) for population context data

The full provenance index is at /data-sources, with retrieval dates and the exact URL used for each figure.

How we verify accuracy

• Every calculator is implemented as a pure TypeScript function with no I/O.
• Each calculator carries golden-fixture unit tests pinned to HMRC published worked examples and dated retrieval URLs.
• CI runs the full unit suite on every push; a numeric drift fails the build before deploy.
• Rates and thresholds are not hard-coded in calculator logic — they come from a per-tax-year ruleset under src/data/tax/ that is itself reviewable against gov.uk on a per-line basis.

Update cadence

Annual maintenance happens on a fixed calendar:

• January — refresh ONS inflation, median salary, and percentile data once the latest ASHE release lands.
• March — prepare the next tax year's ruleset ahead of the 6 April changeover.
• October / November — incorporate any Autumn Statement rate changes within 48 hours.

Out-of-cycle changes happen whenever HMRC publishes corrections or when a reader reports a divergence we can reproduce (see /corrections).

No AI-generated tax content

Calculator logic, tax-band figures, and worked examples are written by hand and reviewed against the cited primary source before they ship. We do not use large language models to draft any number you see on this site. Long-form prose in guides is human-written and reviewed; we publish corrections rather than silent edits when an explanation turns out to be misleading.

Editorial independence

SalaryTax is funded by display advertising (when enabled) and is not paid by any bank, broker, accountant, pension provider, or HMRC-adjacent vendor to publish or omit anything. We do not currently take affiliate commissions. If that ever changes, the relationship will be disclosed on the page where it applies and on this policy.

What this site is not

SalaryTax is an information tool, not a regulated financial-advice service. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and we do not provide personal recommendations on tax planning, pensions, investments, or estate planning. Speak to a chartered tax adviser (CTA), chartered accountant (ACCA/ICAEW), or a regulated financial planner for advice that takes your circumstances into account.

Contact for corrections

Spotted a divergence from HMRC published figures? Email contact@salarytax.uk with the calculator URL, the inputs you used, the figure we returned, and the figure you believe is correct (with the HMRC source). We log and publish every confirmed correction at /corrections.