About

Go Home Early UK is a small set of free calculators for employees: take-home pay after Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan and pension, for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. It is an independent project. It is not run by, endorsed by or connected with HMRC, GOV.UK or the Scottish Government.

Why this exists

Many pay calculators give a result without saying where the rates came from, and two of them can disagree on the same salary. This site publishes the working: the rate, the page or section it was read from, and the date it was checked, next to each figure.

Rates come from the source

Income Tax rates, bands and the Personal Allowance come from GOV.UK pages and Income Tax Act 2007 section 35. National Insurance percentages come from the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 section 8 and the thresholds from the GOV.UK employer rates page. Student loan thresholds come from GOV.UK. The Sources and rates page lists each value, where it was read and the date it was last checked.

How the calculations are checked

The calculations are tested against figures worked out by hand from the published rates, against band edges and the Personal Allowance reduction, and against an independent second implementation written separately and compared on hundreds of cases to the penny. No official HMRC calculator output was available to compare against, and the Sources page says so. The site is not released with a failing test.

Updates

Most rates change on 6 April. When they do, the values and the checked dates are updated together. If you find an error, tell us.

Your numbers

Every calculation runs in your browser. What you enter is not sent to a server. See the privacy policy.