60% Tax Trap Calculator
The £100,000-£125,140 band where the marginal rate quietly hits 60%. See your position and the salary-sacrifice escape, with the existing take-home pay calculator doing the maths.
What happens to my data?
Why the 60% trap exists
Above £100,000, the UK personal allowance starts to taper: £1 of allowance is lost for every £2 of income, until it reaches zero at £125,140. That lost allowance becomes taxable income at 40%, which is what pushes the effective marginal rate to 60% across the £100k-£125,140 band. Plus 2% employee NI. Plus student loan if you have one. You can easily lose 70p of every £1 you earn in this band.
The fix is to sacrifice the slice above £100k into a pension. The pension contribution is taken from gross pay, never enters your taxable income, and so the personal allowance is preserved. Each £1 sacrificed costs you roughly 38p of take-home pay and lands £1 in your pension.
See your own numbers
The Take-Home Pay calculator handles the full band-by-band breakdown including the 60% trap notice. Pick a scenario or open it with your own salary:
The salary-sacrifice escape
| Gross salary | Sacrifice to escape | Net cost | In pension |
|---|---|---|---|
| £110,000 | £10,000 | £3,800 | £10,000 |
| £120,000 | £20,000 | £7,600 | £20,000 |
| £125,140 | £25,140 | £9,553 | £25,140 |
Net cost based on 60% income tax (40% + 20% PA taper) plus 2% NI saving via salary sacrifice. Each £1 in pension costs roughly 38p of take-home pay.