The tax thresholds haven’t moved since 2021. Prices have.
The personal allowance has been and the higher-rate line since April 2021, and both stay put until April 2031. Enter your salary to see your take-home pay if they had risen with inflation instead.
If the thresholds had risen with inflation since 2021, you would take home
| Item | Frozen | Indexed | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay before tax | |||
| Income tax | |||
| National Insurance | |||
| Take-home pay | |||
| Tax and NI as a share of pay |
Keep going: see which tax lines you cross, see the cost at every salary, compare an old salary with today’s prices, or see what happens above £100,000.
Where your pay crosses the lines
Each bar shows the income tax rate on every extra pound you earn. In the indexed version the allowance and the 40% line sit further to the right, so more of your pay is taxed at the lower rates.
Between £100,000 and the point where it runs out, the personal allowance shrinks by £1 for every £2 earned. That makes each extra pound cost 60p in income tax. National Insurance is not shown here.
- Tax-free allowance
- frozen indexed
- Where 40% starts
- frozen indexed
- Your next £100 of pay
- – kept now, after tax and NI– kept if indexed
What the freeze costs at every salary
Extra take-home pay per year, by salary before tax
Show the numbers as a table
| Salary | Frozen take-home | Indexed take-home | Extra take-home |
|---|
How the lines would have moved
Each April the allowance and the higher-rate line would have risen by the previous September’s CPI inflation. Frozen, they stayed at and every year.
| Tax year | Inflation used | Allowance if indexed | Higher-rate line if indexed | Extra take-home at your salary |
|---|
What your old salary is worth today
Prices have risen since you earned it. Enter what you were paid and the year to see what you would need to earn now to buy the same.
- Extra pay needed
- – a year, just to stand still
- Rise in prices
- –
- Measured by CPI, the ONS index of what a typical household buys.
- CPI index, 2015 = 100
- – –
- Prices in 2015 are set at 100. The latest figure came out on 21 October 2026.
Show the numbers as a table
| Year | CPI index | Salary needed | Change from start |
|---|
CPI tracks a typical basket, so your own costs, such as rent or a mortgage, may have moved differently. It compares the average for the year you pick with the latest month, and assumes your old salary was steady through that year.
If you earn over £100,000
Above £100,000 your tax-free allowance shrinks by £1 for every £2 you earn, so each extra pound loses 60p to income tax and 2p to National Insurance. That line has not moved since 2010, and the 45% rate now starts at . Enter a salary to see how the frozen thresholds treat it, and what an inflation-linked allowance would change.
On every extra £1 you earn, income tax and National Insurance take
| Item | Frozen | Indexed | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allowance left | |||
| Income tax | |||
| National Insurance | Same | ||
| Take-home pay | |||
| Tax on next £1 |
How much of each extra £1 you lose
The rate on each extra pound jumps to 62% at £100,000. That is 40% income tax, plus 20% because every £2 you earn also removes £1 of tax-free allowance, plus 2% National Insurance.
Income tax and National Insurance on each extra £1, by salary before tax
Show the numbers as a table
| Salary from | Frozen rate | Indexed rate |
|---|
- The £100,000 line
- £100,000 since 2010, never raised
- Where 45% starts
- since April 2023£150,000 before
- How wide the 60% zone is
- frozen indexed
If your pay only kept up with prices
Because the £100,000 line stands still, a salary that rises exactly with prices drifts towards it and then through it. Each row shows what a salary from 2021 becomes today if it did no more than keep pace.
| Paid in 2021 | Same buying power today | Allowance left today | Tax and NI on the next £1 |
|---|
Get under £100,000 with your adjusted net income
HMRC tests adjusted net income against £100,000 to decide whether you keep your full tax-free allowance, Tax-Free Childcare and the 30 funded hours. It is your taxable income minus some pension payments and Gift Aid, so you can lower it. Enter your figures to see where you stand and what it would cost to get under.
Your adjusted net income is
Ways to get under £100,000
| Route | You pay or give up | Reaches your pension or charity | Cost to your take-home | Cost for each £1 taken off your income |
|---|
Cost is the fall in take-home pay after income tax and National Insurance, including the allowance you get back. Higher-rate relief on a personal pension or Gift Aid arrives through your tax code or a self assessment refund, not straight away.
- What it costs you
- What you keep
- Where you end up
What each extra pension payment does to your money
Per year, by extra pension payment taken from your gross pay
Show the numbers as a table
| Extra payment | Adjusted net income | Take-home pay | Support kept | Take-home plus support |
|---|
- Plan for the whole tax yearAdjusted net income is for 6 April to 5 April. Childcare eligibility uses the income you expect this year and is rechecked every three months, so a bonus later in the year can undo your planning.
- Both parents countEach parent’s adjusted net income is tested on its own against £100,000. Two people on £90,000 both qualify. One on £101,000 and one on £40,000 do not.
- Company pension contributionsMoney your employer adds on top of your salary is not your income, so it cannot lower adjusted net income. Only a salary sacrifice, where you swap pay for a contribution, does. Ask your employer whether they offer one.
- The annual allowanceEverything paid into your pension, from you, your employer and the tax relief, counts towards £60,000 a year. It falls if your income is above £200,000. You may be able to carry forward unused allowance from the last three years.
- Pension money is lockedYou cannot draw on it until at least age 55, rising to 57 from April 2028. Getting under £100,000 this way moves money to your future self.
- Salary sacrifice changes in 2029From April 2029 only the first £2,000 a year of pension salary sacrifice will be free of National Insurance. Nothing changes for 2026/27.
- What this leaves outThe tax estimate treats other income as ordinary pay, so dividends and savings interest, which have their own rates, are only approximate. The adjusted net income figure follows HMRC’s steps but leaves out less common items such as trading losses. This is an illustration, not tax advice.
How this is calculated
Frozen is the real 2026/27 system. Indexed is the same system with the personal allowance and the basic-rate band raised each April by the previous September’s CPI inflation, starting from their April 2021 levels. That is how the tax rules raise them by default when a Chancellor doesn’t intervene. It gives an allowance of and a higher-rate line of for 2026/27. As the rules do, the allowance rounds up to the next £10 and the basic-rate band to the next £100 each year.
Left the same in both versions: the 20%, 40% and 45% rates, the £100,000 point where the allowance starts to shrink, the £125,140 additional-rate point, and National Insurance (8% between £12,570 and £50,270, 2% above). National Insurance thresholds are frozen too, but they are held constant here so the comparison isolates income tax.
Pay then and now: the salary you would need today is your old salary multiplied by the latest CPI index ( for ) and divided by the average CPI index for the year you pick. The result is rounded to the nearest £10.
Who it covers: employees in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with a standard tax code. Scotland has different rates and bands. The comparison at the top leaves out pensions, student loans, benefits, savings and dividends. The adjusted net income calculator adds pensions, Gift Aid and other pay you sacrifice.
Adjusted net income: start with your taxable pay, which is your pay minus anything you sacrifice or pay under a net pay arrangement, plus other income. Then take off Gift Aid donations and relief-at-source pension payments, each grossed up by 25% (£80 paid becomes £100). The tax estimate uses today’s frozen thresholds. It widens the 20% and 40% bands by the grossed-up amounts, as HMRC does, and withdraws the allowance by £1 for every £2 of adjusted net income over £100,000. National Insurance is charged on pay after any salary sacrifice, but not after a net pay arrangement.
Childcare and Child Benefit: Tax-Free Childcare and the 30 funded hours are lost if either parent’s adjusted net income is over £100,000. Above that line you keep 15 of the 30 hours for children aged 3 and 4, and none for children under 3. Child Benefit is £27.05 a week for the eldest child and £17.90 for each other child. The charge takes back 1% for every £200 of the higher earner’s adjusted net income over £60,000, and all of it at £80,000. The childcare values are estimates from the costs you enter, not quotes.
Other estimates differ a little. Using a different inflation measure or start date moves the figures slightly. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that by 2030/31 the allowance would be £4,920 higher and the higher-rate threshold £20,120 higher had both kept pace with inflation. This page is an illustration, not tax advice.
Sources
- ICAEW, Budget 2025: freeze on personal allowance extended to April 2031
- LITRG, Budget 2025 summary of personal tax announcements
- ONS, Consumer price inflation, UK: September 2026 and the CPI index time series (2015 = 100) for annual averages
- GOV.UK, Rates and allowances: National Insurance contributions
- LITRG, Adjusted net income: how Gift Aid, relief at source, net pay and salary sacrifice are treated
- GOV.UK, 30 hours free childcare eligibility and Childcare Choices, working parents: the £100,000 adjusted net income limit
- GOV.UK, High Income Child Benefit Charge and Which?, Child Benefit rates for 2026/27
- OBR, additional rate threshold lowered from £150,000 to £125,140 and ICAEW, the £100,000 taper has stood since 2010
- MoneySavingExpert, salary sacrifice cap from April 2029 and Cambridge Network, annual allowance unchanged at £60,000
- Office for National Statistics, CPI annual rate each September: 2021 (3.1%), 2022 (10.1%), 2023 (6.7%), 2024 (1.7%), 2025 (3.8%)