Reverse Salary Calculator 2026/27

Between £100,000 and £125,140 of adjusted net income you lose £1 of Personal Allowance for every £2 of income. HMRC counts that in whole pounds, so the allowance drops in £1 steps at every £2 of income. Each step adds 40p of tax at once, which means take-home very slightly falls at each step before rising again. In practice this means some take-home figures in this band can be reached by two salaries a few pence apart, and some cannot be hit to the exact penny at all. The calculator always gives you the lowest salary that reaches your target and tells you if it overshoots.

The bigger point is the cost of the band. With an effective 60% income tax rate, a salary sacrifice into your pension is often worth more here than anywhere else on the scale; see the salary sacrifice calculator and our guide to the £100k tax trap. If you also claim Child Benefit, the High Income Child Benefit Charge from £60,000 is not included in take-home here; the HICBC calculator covers it.

A salary-sacrifice pension is set as a percentage of gross, so the salary you need rises by more than the contribution: you want the same cash in hand after giving up a slice of a bigger salary. The good news is that the slice escapes income tax and NI, so it costs you less take-home than it puts in your pot.

Student loans are deducted at 9% of pay above your plan's threshold (£29,385 for Plan 2 in 2026/27), and a postgraduate loan adds 6% above £21,000. Example: £2,500 a month take-home with a 5% salary-sacrifice pension and a Plan 2 loan needs a salary of £39,825.82, of which £760.46 a year goes to the loan and £1,991.29 into the pension.

For the full picture on repayments see the student loan calculator.

Use it when you know the monthly figure you need, for rent, a mortgage application or a household budget, and want to know what salary to ask for. It is also useful when a job is advertised as a take-home figure, or when you are comparing a contractor rate with an employed role.

It assumes one job, a standard 1257L tax code, and pay spread evenly across the year. Bonuses, benefits in kind, a second job or an emergency tax code will change what lands in your account in a given month; the tax code calculator explains those.