UK Salary Projection Calculator
Project your gross + take-home pay forward 5, 10 or 30 years. You set the pay-growth and CPI assumptions; the model uses the 2026/27 UK tax rules and explicitly shows fiscal-drag from frozen thresholds.
Your scenario
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ONS ASHE long-run UK median: 2-4%. Mid-career professionals often see 4-6% via job switches.
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Bank of England target 2.0%. Most recent reading 2.8% (June 2026 MPC).
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UK Income Tax bands frozen through 2027/28. After that, unknown - set to 0 for worst-case fiscal-drag scenario.
Year-by-year projection
Real-terms (today's money) columns discount nominal pay by your CPI assumption. The "Drag tax" column shows how much extra tax you pay due to frozen thresholds vs a CPI- uprated counterfactual.
Why fiscal drag matters
- The £12,570 Personal Allowance + £50,270 higher-rate threshold are frozen in cash terms through 2027/28 (Autumn Statement 2022 + Autumn Budget 2025 extension).
- Each year of freeze, the real-terms (CPI-adjusted) thresholds shrink. By 2027/28 the £50,270 higher-rate threshold is approximately £41,500 in 2021/22 prices - a 17% real-terms cut.
- HMRC projects 7.08 million higher-rate (40%) taxpayers in 2025/26 (+38.7% vs 2022/23) and 1.23 million additional-rate (45%) taxpayers (+115.3% vs 2022/23) directly from the freeze. See income tax payers stat.
- After 2027/28, the political default is to revert to CPI uprating, but this has not been legislated. Set the "Tax band uprating" slider to your assumption (0% = continued freeze, 2% = matches BoE target, 3-4% = matches typical pay growth).
Caveats + what this does NOT model
- Tax bands frozen at 2026/27 levels for years 1-2 (the legislated freeze), then uprated by your "Tax band uprating" assumption each subsequent year.
- NI rates + bands assumed unchanged. The April 2024 NI rate cut from 12% to 8% was the most recent change; the upper rate 2% is unchanged for decades.
- Pension Annual Allowance (£60,000) not modelled - if your contribution exceeds that you face a tax charge. Currently the slider caps at 60% of salary which would breach only on salaries above £100,000.
- Student loans, HICBC, Marriage Allowance, BIK + tax codes not modelled - use the main salary calculator for any specific tax year.
- Career trajectory assumed linear (single pay-growth rate). Real careers have non-linear inflexion points - promotion, job switch, parental leave gap, sabbatical. Model the average growth as the slider value.