Online salary/tax calculators

[SuddenlySidney]

Is there such a thing as a decent online salary/tax calculator?

I’ve tried a couple and the results have come in close to one another, but was wondering if there is one in particular that is recommended.

Obviously I’m not expecting it to be correct to the last pound, but it would be useful if we could get a close approximation. We think there’s a chance dh may have been miscoded, which will result in us needing to set aside some money to pay the tax demand when it comes in.

Is your DH under PAYE or self employed?
Tax codes aren't really linked to predicted salary as they indicate the amount of the tax free personal allowance. The predicted salary is based on the first months earnings for the new company but maybe less as you didn't work the full month
However you do start to lose your personal allowance if your taxable salary is over £100k
When i have under paid tax in one tax year, the next year's tax code was amended in July time to recover the missing amount over the remainder of the tax year.
Any tax overpayment was sent to my back account.

PAYE, but moved from contracting (within IR35) at the end of last tax year. Unfortunately, the umbrella company he was paid through as a contractor messed up and paid him late for March, so his pay arrived in April, which triggered HMRC to use a really weird type of tax code, which assumed he would be paid for both every month. It took a while, but he managed to sort that out eventually and was given another tax code, then the unexpected bonus in the last month of the tax year has skewed the figures again.

I have the figure for his total taxable pay, including the late payment from previous tax year’s earnings, taxable benefits and total gross pay from this employer and the amount he’s paid into his pension to put into the calculators, so I’m hoping that should give us some idea of how much, if any underpayment there has been.

It is very unlikely he will owe tax if he has been paying via paye unless he's gone over £100k

The Salary Calculator for me too. Very accurate.

Hopefully you won’t have too long to wait for a P60, mine was issued with my March payslip.

Yes, unfortunately the unexpected bonus tipped him into that category. He thinks we won’t see much of the bonus left as a result. He had asked to put extra in his pension, but payroll didn’t process it in time, so it didn’t happen.

The calculators, particularly The Salary Calculator, seem to take that into account though and give you a box with an explanation of the 100k+ tapering that’s been applied.

He’s been told end of April, which isn’t too long now, but we have a meeting with our builders this week and have some decisions to make re the build. So it would be good to know at least a decent approximation of what funds we have available.

If it's all been going through PAYE then it often sorts itself out in month 12, so hopefully you won't have any unexpected bills.

What was his final annual figure on his payslip

Very basic calculation but should be the max owing. You owe 40% on half the earnings above £100k. He needs to register for self assessment too

@Wiaa Than you, for all your help. I’d rather not put any actual figures online though.

He does a self assessment every year and we have an accountant. They’ve advised him to get his SA for last year in straight away, to straighten everything up going forwards, as his own business as a contractor is now legally closed and he is just employed full time via PAYE now. So, he will be doing the SA as soon as his P60 comes in. It’s just frustrating that it’s going to come a little bit too late for our decisions re the building work.

As you can probably tell, I am not mathematically minded at all and get confused with this type of thing. I was hoping we might be able to get a rough idea, but it seems like we are just going to have to wait a few more weeks to find out. I was so pleased when he said he’d been given a bonus, as it should have meant we could make a small adjustment to our build which would make it work much better for us - then he explained about it tipping him over the 100k threshold and that he wasn’t sure we’d get to keep a large chunk of it.

I will work out the 40% on earnings over 100k figure, but am thinking it’s probably going to be best to just wait and see. The house will still be much better after the build anyway, even with the cheaper option. (The building work is being done to accommodate mobility issues.) Dh has worked so hard to get to this point and we have been waiting over a decade to be able to afford the building work, which will make such a difference to our family. So while I am extremely grateful we are lucky enough to be able to do it, I suppose I am also a bit stressed about the whole thing. I need to focus on being grateful, be pleased if he gets anything left over and stick with the original plan I think.

Has your DH got a Personal Tax Account online? HMRC page

You should be able to see the total income for the year on there and use the totals from there in one of the tax calculators.

If you're combining two employments on one calculator, ignore the NI calculations. These won't be correct compared to what has been paid as you get one NI allowance per job, so the online calculator will show more than has actually been paid.

The tax shown would be the correct tax across both jobs though.

As you say, if the bonus in March has tipped his total earnings over £100k there may not have been sufficient time for the tax code to calculate the tax correctly, but at least you'll be able to compare the total to what's been paid.

It's also worth checking his 2023/24 tax code while you're on the site. If you think it might be wrong, call HMRC and ask them to check it. They'd need information about salaries, benefits in kind and any other earnings, but will amend it if it needs correcting.

Use the figures from the March payslip they should be the same as the P60