£12,000 After Tax UK
2026/27
Exact take-home pay after Income Tax and National Insurance — HMRC 2026/27 rates
What a £12,000 salary means in 2026/27
At £12,000 you earn no more than the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the National Insurance Primary Threshold, so you pay no Income Tax and no employee NI. Take-home equals gross pay: £12,000 a year. Each extra £1,000 you earn up to £12,570 is kept in full.
If you put 5% of salary (£600) into a workplace pension via salary sacrifice, take-home pay falls from £12,000 to £11,400 — a drop of £600 a year (£50 a month) for £600 of pension saving, before any employer contribution.
At this salary you are below the 2026/27 student loan repayment thresholds (Plan 1 £26,900, Plan 2 £29,385), so no loan repayments are deducted.
On a standard 40-hour week (2,080 hours a year) £12,000 works out at £5.77 an hour gross, or £5.77 an hour after tax and NI — about £46 take-home per working day. Your employer's cost is higher than your salary: with 15% employer NI above £5,000 it is roughly £13,050 a year.
These figures assume you live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, are on tax code 1257L, and have no other income. Scottish taxpayers pay different Income Tax rates — use the Scotland take-home pay calculator. To include your own pension, benefits or loan plan, use the full take-home pay calculator.
What a £12,000 salary means in practice
At £12,000 a year you earn £1,000 a month, £231 a week or £46 a day before deductions, and you take home £12,000 because you are below the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the £12,570 threshold at which employee National Insurance starts. On a 37.5-hour week the pay is about £6.15 an hour, and on a 20-hour part-time week about £11.54 an hour.
Using up your unused Personal Allowance
You have £570 of Personal Allowance you are not using. That does not carry forward, but you can put it to work. If you have savings income, the first £5,000 of interest can fall into the starting rate for savings if your other income is low, and the Personal Savings Allowance of up to £1,000 sits on top. If you are married or in a civil partnership and your partner pays tax at the basic rate, you may be able to transfer £1,260 of your allowance to them through Marriage Allowance, which can reduce their tax by up to £252 a year. Because only £570 of your allowance is unused, transferring the full £1,260 would mean paying 20% tax on £690 of your own income, about £138, so the net gain is nearer £114 and worth checking before you apply.
Pension, benefits and the cost to your employer
Auto-enrolment applies to employees aged 22 or over earning more than £10,000 a year, so a salary of £12,000 means your employer must enrol you in a workplace pension. Minimum contributions are 8% of qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270, which on this salary is about £461 a year in total, of which you pay about £288 and your employer at least £173. Your employer pays National Insurance of 15% on earnings above £5,000, so employing you costs about £13,050 a year. If you claim Universal Credit alongside your wages, your award is reduced by 55p for each £1 of earnings after the work allowance, so check your total household income rather than the salary alone.
If you are self-employed on the same income
A sole trader with £12,000 of profit would also pay no Income Tax and no Class 4 National Insurance, because both start above £12,570, but they would still need to register for Self Assessment if their income from self-employment is above £1,000 (after the trading allowance). Employees at this level do not need to complete a tax return unless they have other untaxed income. See our take-home pay calculator to model other salaries, deductions and a different tax code.
Frequently asked questions
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