If you earn money in the UK, the government takes a cut. That's income tax. But how much you actually pay depends on where your income falls across a set of bands — and it's not as straightforward as most people think.
Here's a plain-English breakdown of every income tax band for the 2025/26 tax year (6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026), with worked examples so you can see exactly what you owe.
| Band | Taxable Income | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Personal Allowance | Up to £12,570 | 0% |
| Basic rate | £12,571 – £50,270 | 20% |
| Higher rate | £50,271 – £125,140 | 40% |
| Additional rate | Over £125,140 | 45% |
These rates apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own bands — we cover those separately here.
Everyone gets a Personal Allowance of £12,570. You don't pay a penny of income tax on this amount. It doesn't matter if you earn £15,000 or £90,000 — your first £12,570 is always free.
Well, almost always. If you earn over £100,000, HMRC starts clawing it back. More on that later.
Once you go above the Personal Allowance, you're into basic rate territory. Every pound you earn between £12,571 and £50,270 gets taxed at 20%.
So if you earn £30,000 a year, your tax bill looks like this:
That's it. £3,486 in income tax for the year. About £290 a month.
This is where it starts to sting. Earn above £50,270 and every additional pound gets taxed at 40%.
But here's the bit people get wrong: you don't pay 40% on your entire salary. You only pay 40% on the portion above £50,270. The tax on everything below that stays the same.
Example — you earn £70,000:
Your effective tax rate is about 22%, even though your top rate is 40%. That's how marginal tax bands work.
If you earn more than £125,140, everything above that threshold gets taxed at 45%. By this point, you've also lost your entire Personal Allowance (see below), so you're paying tax from the first pound.
This catches a lot of people off guard. Once your income goes above £100,000, your Personal Allowance gets reduced by £1 for every £2 you earn over that threshold. By the time you hit £125,140, your allowance is gone completely.
The maths on this creates an effective 60% marginal tax rate on income between £100,000 and £125,140. You're paying 40% tax plus losing your allowance at the same time.
If your salary is anywhere near this range, it's worth looking at pension contributions or salary sacrifice to bring your adjusted net income below £100,000. We've written a full guide to the £100k tax trap here.
Income tax isn't the only deduction on your payslip. You also pay National Insurance (NI) on your earnings:
NI is separate from income tax and has its own thresholds, though they happen to align at £12,570 this year. Use our National Insurance calculator to see the full breakdown.
The easiest way is to plug your salary into our income tax calculator. It uses the exact HMRC 2025/26 rates and shows you a band-by-band breakdown in seconds.
If you want to see the full picture — income tax, NI, pension deductions, student loan and take-home pay — use the take-home pay calculator instead.
Enter your salary and see exactly how much you'll pay across each band.