£120,000 After Tax UK
2026/27
Exact take-home pay after Income Tax and National Insurance — HMRC 2026/27 rates
What a £120,000 salary means in 2026/27
Between £100,000 and £125,140 the Personal Allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 of income, which produces an effective marginal rate of about 62% on this slice. At £120,000 you have lost £10,000 of your £12,570 allowance, leaving £2,570 tax-free.
Contributing £20,000 to a pension (16.7% of salary) takes adjusted net income back to £100,000 and restores the full allowance. Take-home would fall by roughly £7,600 even though £20,000 goes into your pension.
If you put 5% of salary (£6,000) into a workplace pension via salary sacrifice, take-home pay falls from £76,157 to £73,877 — a drop of £2,280 a year (£190 a month) for £6,000 of pension saving, before any employer contribution.
Student loan repayments come on top of tax and NI. On this salary a Plan 1 borrower repays £8,379 a year and a Plan 2 borrower £8,155 (9% above the 2026/27 thresholds of £26,900 and £29,385), leaving take-home of £67,778 or £68,002.
On a standard 40-hour week (2,080 hours a year) £120,000 works out at £57.69 an hour gross, or £36.61 an hour after tax and NI — about £293 take-home per working day. Your employer's cost is higher than your salary: with 15% employer NI above £5,000 it is roughly £137,250 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.
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