What's the take-home on £30,000 in 2026/27?

The full breakdown for England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Tax and NI take 16.3% and you keep about 84p in the pound — before any student loan, which on this salary ranges from nothing on Plan 4 to £990 a year for Plan 5 plus a Postgraduate Loan.

The Scottish version is different

Scotland still comes out slightly ahead at £30,000; the section further down shows why, and the salary at which that stops.

How student loans change the £30,000 picture

Student loan repayments are a separate deduction from PAYE — not income tax — but they sit in the same payslip and feel identical to tax. The plan you're on (which depends on when you started university) determines the threshold and the rate:

• Plan 2 (English / Welsh students starting Sep 2012 to Aug 2023): repayment threshold £29,385. On £30,000 you repay 9% of the slice above £29,385 — about £4.60 a month.
• Plan 5 (English students starting Sep 2023+): repayment threshold £25,000. On £30,000 you repay 9% of the slice above £25,000 — about £37.50 a month.
• Plan 1 (Scottish / NI students, English pre-2012): threshold £26,900. On £30,000 you repay 9% of the slice above £26,900 — about £23 a month.
• Postgraduate Loan: threshold £21,000, rate 6%. Stacks on top of any undergraduate plan. On £30,000 that's another £45 a month.

So depending on your loan combination, two people on identical £30,000 contracts can take home up to £990 a year apart — £450 of that on undergraduate plans alone. The student loan calculator shows the difference for any specific combination.

The widest student loan spread anywhere on the ladder

£30,000 is the salary where the repayment plans disagree most violently, because Plan 2's threshold sits only £615 below it. Using HMRC's SL3 thresholds for 2026 to 2027, Plan 2 (£29,385) repays 9% of the excess — 9% of £615, or £55.35 a year. Plan 5 (£25,000) repays 9% of £5,000, or £450.00 a year: 8.1 times as much money out of an identical payslip. Plan 1 (£26,900) sits between them at £279.00, and Plan 4, for Scottish-domiciled students, repays nothing at all because its threshold is £33,795.

Two people on the same £30,000 contract can therefore be £450 a year apart on undergraduate borrowing alone, and £990 apart once a Postgraduate Loan is in play. That worst case — Plan 5 plus PGL — is £82.50 a month, cutting take-home from £2,093 to £2,011.

The 8.1:1 ratio collapses quickly as pay rises, because the fixed gap between the two thresholds shrinks as a share of the repayable slice. By £40,000 it is 1.41:1 (£1,350.00 against £955.35), and by £50,000 it is down to 1.21:1. This rung is the only place on the ladder where the year you happened to start university changes your monthly deduction by an order of magnitude — which is why the plan number printed on your payslip is worth checking rather than assuming.

Is Scotland cheaper at £30,000?

Yes — just. The Scottish Government's Scottish Income Tax 2026 to 2027 technical factsheet, published on 13 January 2026, states that Scots earning less than around £33,500 will pay slightly less income tax in 2026/27 than they would elsewhere in the UK, and that a taxpayer on the Scottish median income of £31,136 will be "around £24 better off".

At £30,000 the Scottish bill is £3,451.07 against £3,486.00 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — £34.93 less a year. The saving is produced by the 19% starter rate applied to the first £3,967 of taxable income. Part of it is handed back at the top of the salary: the last £474 of a £30,000 wage falls into the 21% intermediate band, which begins at £29,527 — 1p more in the pound than rUK, so £4.74 of the £39.67 starter-rate saving goes back, leaving £34.93.

The crossover at roughly £33,500 means £20,000, £25,000 and £30,000 are the rungs on this ladder where the Scottish taxpayer comes out ahead. Above that the gap reverses and widens fast — about £65 a year worse off at £40,000, £1,496 at £50,000 and £3,300 at £100,000.

The 2026/27 Scottish bands in full: starter 19% on £12,571–£16,537; basic 20% on £16,538–£29,526; intermediate 21% on £29,527–£43,662; higher 42% on £43,663–£75,000; advanced 45% on £75,001–£125,140; and top rate 48% above £125,140.

Can a Lifetime ISA beat a pension at £30,000?

At £30,000 you are a basic-rate taxpayer with £20,270 of headroom before the £50,270 higher-rate threshold, so pension tax relief is worth 20% — or 28% through salary sacrifice, because the 8% NI main rate also applies to this slice of pay. A Lifetime ISA pays a 25% government bonus on contributions of up to £4,000 a year, a maximum of £1,000, and pays out entirely tax-free — whereas 75% of a pension pot is taxable when you draw it.

That combination makes basic-rate taxpayers who opened a LISA before age 40, and who can keep paying in until 50, the only group for whom the arithmetic can favour the LISA on contributions nobody is matching. At 40% relief it never does, which is why this comparison is irrelevant at every rung above £50,270.

The counterweight at this salary is employer matching. The statutory auto-enrolment minimum is 8% of qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 — 8% of £23,760, or £1,900.80 a year, which is 6.34% of your actual pay. Your employer puts in £712.80 of that. No LISA bonus matches free employer money, so the sensible order is to take the full employer match first and only then decide where anything extra goes.

Before committing, check the exit rules: taking money out of a LISA for anything other than a first home or reaching age 60 triggers a government withdrawal charge that can leave you with less than you paid in. The LISA penalty rules set out how that works, and the cash ISA vs stocks and shares ISA vs LISA guide compares the accounts side by side.

Who actually earns £30,000 in the UK?

£30,000 puts you in the bottom third of full-time employees and just below the all-employee median. The ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional, Table 1.7a) records the full-time 25th percentile at £29,262 and the 30th percentile at £30,935, so £30,000 sits between them. Against all employees, part-time included, the 40th percentile was £28,591 and the median £32,890 — so £30,000 clears the 40th percentile but falls £2,890 short of the all-employee median, and £9,039 below the full-time median of £39,039.

Occupations whose median full-time pay lands almost exactly here, from ASHE Table 14.7a: chefs at £30,010 across 107,000 full-time jobs; welfare and housing associate professionals not elsewhere classified £30,087 (98,000); local government administrative occupations £30,886 (42,000); bank and post office clerks £30,265 (49,000); pensions and insurance clerks and assistants £30,269 (29,000); early education and childcare services managers £30,140 (18,000); sports coaches, instructors and officials £30,108 (18,000); and farm workers £30,101 (20,000).

Just below the line sit stock control clerks and assistants at £29,991 (58,000 jobs), medical and dental technicians £29,931 (23,000), catering and bar managers £29,789 (28,000), senior care workers £29,381 (75,000) and retail and wholesale sales supervisors £29,172 (58,000). Between them, those occupations alone account for more than 600,000 full-time jobs paid at close to this rate.

What this calculation does not include

• Pension contributions. Auto-enrolment takes your 5% from £23,760 of qualifying earnings rather than the whole £30,000, which is £1,188 a year or £99 a month. Through a net-pay scheme taxable pay drops to £28,812 and income tax to £3,248.40, so the real cost is £950.40 a year and monthly take-home falls from £2,093 to about £2,014. Your employer adds £712.80, which means £1,900.80 goes into the pot for £950.40 out of your pocket. Salary sacrifice would save a further £95.04 of employee NI.
• Student loan repayments. Nothing above assumes a loan, and at £30,000 the plan you are on matters more than at any other rung: nil on Plan 4, £55.35 on Plan 2, £279.00 on Plan 1, £450.00 on Plan 5, plus £540.00 for a Postgraduate Loan stacked on top. On Plan 5 the deduction on your next pay rise is 37p in the pound, not 28p.
• Bonuses, overtime and one-off payments. You have £20,270 of room before the £50,270 higher-rate threshold, so a bonus is taxed at a flat 28% until it exceeds that — the marginal rate does not jump anywhere in between. In Scotland the same bonus meets 29% (21% intermediate rate plus 8% NI), which is the one place the small Scottish advantage at this salary disappears. Cumulative PAYE can still over-deduct in the month a large bonus is paid and correct later in the year.
• Benefits in kind. Each £1,000 of taxable benefit — a company car, medical insurance, a cheap loan — adds £200 to your income tax through a lower tax code, and nothing to employee NI. The identical car costs a colleague on £60,000 exactly twice as much, so a benefit scheme is relatively better value at this salary — provided the benefit does not carry your taxable income past £50,270.
• Multiple jobs. With the whole Personal Allowance used by the main job, a second employer's BR code rightly taxes that pay at 20% from the first pound. Two quirks cut the other way: a second job paying under £242 a week pays no employee NI, because each employment has its own threshold, and each employer applies the student loan threshold separately — two £15,000 jobs deduct nothing in-year even though your combined pay is £30,000.

Sources and methodology

Sources: GOV.UK 2026/27 Income Tax, National Insurance and Scottish Income Tax rates, plus HMRC's SL3 student loan tables, the Scottish Income Tax 2026 to 2027 factsheet and Lifetime ISA rules. Methodology · Disclaimer

Other take-home pay scenarios

£25,000 sits exactly on the Plan 5 threshold and £35,000 is the first rung where Plan 4 takes anything; the salary hub links the full ladder.