UK Salary Projection Calculator
Project UK take-home pay over 5 to 30 years with your own pay growth and inflation assumptions, in cash and real terms, and the cost of frozen thresholds.
Your scenario
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Your assumption. One rate is applied every year.
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The Bank of England's inflation target is 2%.
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The Personal Allowance and higher-rate threshold are frozen to 5 April 2031. Nothing has been announced for later years; 0 assumes the freeze continues.
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 and NI you pay because thresholds stay frozen, compared with uprating them by your "Tax band uprating" assumption after 2030/31. With that assumption at 0 the column stays empty.
Why fiscal drag matters
- The £12,570 Personal Allowance and £50,270 higher-rate threshold are frozen in cash terms through 2030/31 (the Autumn Statement 2022 freeze to April 2028, extended to 5 April 2031 at the Autumn Budget 2025).
- While a threshold is frozen and prices rise, its value in real terms falls each year, so more of a pay rise is taxed at a higher rate.
- HMRC projects 7.70 million higher-rate and 1.29 million additional-rate Income Tax payers in 2026/27, out of 40.8 million, up 33.8% and 44.4% on 2023/24. See the income tax payers statistic.
- No decision has been announced for thresholds after 2030/31. Set the "Tax band uprating" input to your own assumption (0% means the freeze continues).
Caveats + what this does NOT model
- Year 1 is 2026/27. Tax bands stay at 2026/27 levels for years 1-5 (to 2030/31, the announced freeze), then all thresholds, including NI thresholds, are uprated by your "Tax band uprating" assumption each later year.
- Rest-of-UK and Scottish rates are both held at 2026/27 values. Scottish bands are set each year by the Scottish Parliament, so the Scotland projection is a simplification.
- NI rates assumed unchanged at the 2026/27 employee rates (8% main, 2% above the Upper Earnings Limit).
- The pension Annual Allowance (£60,000 in 2026/27) is not modelled. Employer contributions count towards it, and it is tapered for some high earners.
- Student loans, High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC), Marriage Allowance, Benefit in Kind (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.