Adjusted net income calculator
Adjusted net income is your total taxable income minus grossed-up pension contributions and Gift Aid. It is not your salary and not your take-home, and it is the figure HMRC actually tests against the £100,000 childcare cliff, the personal allowance taper and the Child Benefit charge. Getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.
After salary sacrifice, sacrificed pay never counts.
What left your bank account, the 25% top-up is added for you.
Your adjusted net income
£105,000.00
What is adjusted net income?
Start with all taxable income: salary and taxable benefits, self-employment profit, interest, dividends and rent. Subtract pension contributions that were paid from taxed money, grossed up, so a £4,000 relief-at-source payment counts as £5,000. Subtract Gift Aid the same way. What remains is adjusted net income. Salary sacrifice and net-pay pension contributions never appear, because that pay was never taxable in the first place, a £110,000 salary with £12,000 sacrificed into a pension has an ANI of £98,000, safely under every £100,000 rule, while the same earner contributing £9,600 by relief at source arrives at the same £98,000 by deduction instead.
Which thresholds does adjusted net income decide?
Three: the £100,000 cliff that ends free childcare support, the £100,000-£125,140 personal allowance taper, and the £60,000-£80,000 High Income Child Benefit Charge. All three test ANI, not salary, which is why a pension contribution can rescue all of them at once.
- £100,000, childcare, a cliff. One pound over ends both free childcare hours and Tax-Free Childcare for the whole year. For a parent with two children in nursery this can be worth more than the pay rise that caused it.
- £100,000–£125,140, the allowance taper. £1 of allowance lost per £2 of ANI, producing an effective marginal rate above 60%, measured exactly on our £120,000 page.
- £60,000–£80,000, the Child Benefit charge. 1% of Child Benefit is clawed back per £200 of ANI above £60,000, gone entirely at £80,000.
How to reduce your adjusted net income
Pension contributions are the lever: every gross pound contributed reduces ANI by a pound, whichever arrangement you use. Salary sacrifice does it most cheaply because it saves National Insurance too. Around the thresholds above, a contribution that pulls ANI back under the line is effectively relieved at 60-100%+, the childcare cliff can make a £1,000 contribution worth several thousand pounds.
What this calculator assumes
It follows HMRC's published method but cannot see your circumstances, trading losses, payroll giving and some reliefs also adjust the figure. For self-assessment, the number HMRC computes from your return is definitive. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
2026/27 thresholds, checked 2026-08-28 against gov.uk's adjusted net income guidance. Method on the about page.