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True Take-Home

Reverse tax calculator

Rent, bills and the life you want are all monthly take-home numbers, but job adverts and salary negotiations speak in gross. This calculator works backwards: tell it the net you need, it finds the salary that delivers it, to the penny, for 2026/27. It is the salary converter that runs the unusual way round: most convert a gross salary into take-home, this one takes the take-home and converts it back to the gross salary an advert would have to say.

Calculator

Reverse tax calculator

To take home £30,000 a year (£2,500.00 a month) you need a salary of

£36,778

That salary pays £4,841.67 income tax and £1,936.67 National Insurance, you keep 81.6%.

How the reverse calculation works

There is no formula that runs the tax system backwards, because the marginal rate changes at every band edge. The engine finds your answer by bisection: it searches for the gross salary whose forward calculation lands on your target net to the penny, using exactly the same maths as the main calculator. The test suite verifies the round trip, net to gross to net, returns the number it started with.

Assumes the standard 1257L tax code, no pension and no student loan, each of those raises the salary you'd need.

Why the required salary grows faster than the target

Each extra pound of take-home costs more gross than the last, because the extra gross is taxed at your marginal rate. Going from £2,000 to £2,500 a month of net needs £8,333 more salary; from £5,000 to £5,500 needs £10,345; and inside the £100k taper, from £6,500 to £7,000 costs £11,403 of gross, every figure here computed by the engine, not estimated. Negotiate in gross, but sanity-check in net.

Common monthly targets, already worked out

A page each for the figures people search for, with the salary needed, where it ranks among UK taxpayers, and what a pension or student loan does to it: £1,000 a month, £1,500 a month, £2,000 a month, £3,000 a month and £4,000 a month.

Related tools

2026/27 rates, checked 28 August 2026 by Hadi. Method on the about page.

The gross-to-net curve you are working backwards along

Going from take-home to gross is harder than the reverse because the relationship is not a straight line: the gap between the two widens at every threshold, so the same increase in take-home needs a larger and larger rise in gross the further up you go. The shaded wedge is tax and National Insurance.

£0£50k£100k£150kgrosstake-hometax & NI£0£50k£100k£150k

The shaded area is income tax and National Insurance. At £50,000 you keep 79.0% of gross; at £150,000 you keep 60.9%. The gap widens at each threshold rather than smoothly.

Horizontal axis gross salary, vertical axis pounds. Standard 1257L code, no pension or student loan, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. HMRC 2026/27, checked 2026-08-28.

How to use the reverse tax calculator

  1. 1

    Enter the take-home figure you want, monthly or yearly.

  2. 2

    Set your region, pension and student loan, because each changes the gross needed.

  3. 3

    Read the gross salary that produces it, found by working the tax calculation backwards.

  4. 4

    Use the breakdown to see how much of the gap is tax, National Insurance and deductions.

When should you use the reverse tax calculator?

Use it when you know the take-home you need and want the gross salary that produces it, which is the figure adverts and offers are written in.

You know what you need to live on

Budgets are built on take-home, but job adverts are written in gross.

Salary negotiation

Asking for the gross that produces the net you need is a more precise ask.

Going freelance

Working back from your current take-home tells you the invoice value to aim for.

Setting someone else's salary

Employers who promise a take-home figure need the gross that delivers it.

Where to go next

All 51 calculators share one tested engine, so a figure from the reverse tax calculator agrees with every other page here. See the full calculator index or the pay and tax guides.