What does the K497 tax code mean?
K497 means: Roughly £4,970.00 of extra income is being taxed through your pay. In short: a K code, untaxed income exceeds your allowance. Use the checker below as a K tax code calculator with your own K number. A UK tax code is the instruction HMRC sends your employer for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027): it sets how much of your pay is tax-free before income tax is deducted through PAYE, so the code on your payslip directly decides your take-home. The standard code for most employees with one job is 1257L, worth £12,570 of tax-free income a year, any other code should have a reason behind it (a company benefit, a second job, an HMRC adjustment), and a code that's wrong for your situation means paying the wrong tax every single payday until it's fixed. Decoded below against HMRC's rules as checked on 2026-08-28, with what K497 costs or saves against the standard code.
Decoded
- K: instead of a tax-free allowance, £4,970.00 is ADDED to your taxable pay. This happens when untaxed income (a company car, state pension, tax owed from earlier years) is worth more than your allowance.
On a £32,000 salary, K497 deducts roughly £994.00 more income tax per year than the standard 1257L code, £82.83 a month. If this is your only job and nothing explains the code, that is money to reclaim.
Why a K code works backwards
Every other code on this list describes pay you are not taxed on. A K code describes the reverse. The 497 is still multiplied by ten, but the £4,970 it produces is added to the pay payroll taxes rather than subtracted from it, so where 1257L hands over £12,570 tax free, K497 taxes £4,970 you were never paid. That happens when untaxed income or a benefit in kind is worth more than the allowance it is being set against, which turns the leftover into an addition.
The arithmetic is the whole page: on £32,000 of salary a K497 code has payroll tax £36,970, which is why the figure in the box above is £994.00 more than the standard code takes. The number after the K is the only thing that changes between one K code and another, so the checker below answers for any of them: type K and your own number rather than looking for a page per value.
How do I find out what code I should be on?
Your current code is on every payslip and on your P60, and the reasoning behind it is in your HMRC personal tax account, which lists the allowances and deductions that produced the number. If the account shows an estimate that is out of date, a company benefit you no longer have or a job you have left, you can change it there and a new code reaches your employer within a few weeks. Employers cannot change a code themselves: they apply whatever HMRC issues, so the fix always runs through HMRC rather than payroll.
Check your own code
Type any code, this page's and every other format HMRC issues:
Tax-free allowance of about £12,570.00 a year.
- L: you get the standard personal allowance.
Other codes people look up
2026/27 rules, checked 28 August 2026 by Hadi. If your code looks wrong, correct it via your personal tax account on gov.uk, refunds for the current year arrive through your pay automatically.