Pay, Tax & Business Calculators
Nine calculators for earning and pricing — what lands in your account after tax, and what a price needs to be for the business to work.
Before the take-home figure, the whole offer
A salary is one line of a package. The Job Offer Comparator puts base, bonus, equity, employer pension, benefits and the commute on the same annual scale for two or three offers at once, and names the component actually driving the difference — which is often the pension, not the headline. Run its total through the Salary Calculator when you want the after-tax version. If the choice is between employment and working for yourself, the Freelance Rate works backwards from the take-home you want to the day rate that actually produces it — usually a much higher number than dividing a salary by the working days in a year.
What you earn versus what you keep
Gross salary is a headline; take-home pay is the number your budget runs on. The Salary Calculator applies income tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan deductions to show what actually arrives, and the Tax Calculator breaks the tax itself down band by band so you can see where each pound goes. If you are paid partly on results, the Commission combines base pay and commission into one figure.
Markup and margin are not the same number
This is the most common pricing mistake there is. Markup is profit as a percentage of cost; margin is profit as a percentage of price. A 50% markup is a 33% margin. Pricing on markup while budgeting on margin quietly erodes profit on every sale. The Markup Calculator goes from cost to price, the Profit Margin goes the other way and shows both figures side by side.
Know your break-even before you set a price
The Break-Even finds how many units you need to sell to cover fixed and variable costs. It is the single most useful number in early-stage pricing, because it converts an abstract margin into a concrete monthly sales target — and it usually reveals that the price needs to be higher than instinct suggests.
VAT sits on top of all of it
If you are VAT-registered, the price your customer pays and the revenue you keep differ by the VAT rate. The VAT Calculator adds VAT to a net price or strips it out of a gross one, at any rate, which matters when you are quoting to consumers and businesses in the same week.
Frequently asked questions
Which calculator do I need — salary or tax?＋
The salary calculator starts from a gross figure and works down to take-home, applying bands, allowances and deductions in order. The tax calculator answers the narrower question of what is owed on a given amount. If you want to know what lands in your account, use salary; if you want the tax line alone, use tax.
Why do markup and margin give different percentages on the same sale?＋
Because they divide the same profit by different denominators. Markup measures profit against what the item cost you; margin measures it against what the customer paid. Since the selling price is always the larger of the two, the margin percentage is always the smaller. Quoting one while thinking of the other is the most common pricing error there is.
Do these figures include National Insurance and student loan?＋
The salary calculator handles the deductions it names on the page and lists what it excludes in its assumptions. Anything not named — salary sacrifice arrangements, benefits in kind, unusual tax codes — is not modelled. Always check the result against a payslip before relying on it for a budget.
How current are the tax bands?＋
Each tax tool shows the tax year it is calculating for and carries its own last-updated date. Bands and thresholds change at least annually and sometimes mid-year, so a figure computed against last year’s bands can be materially wrong. Check the year label on the tool matches the year you are asking about.
More finance & money tools
Every tool listed here produces an estimate from the numbers you enter and the assumptions stated on its own page. None of them accounts for fees, charges, tax treatment or your individual circumstances, and rates and thresholds change. Tool Corner is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and does not give financial advice. Speak to a qualified adviser before making a financial decision.
Each tool states its own assumptions and sources. Read the full disclaimer.