UK Income Tax rates for 2025/26 and 2026/27

Income Tax for a UK resident depends on three official ideas: how much of your income sits above your Personal Allowance, which country of the United Kingdom the Scottish or the other UK rates apply to, and whether the income is non-savings, savings or dividends. The rates and band widths below are taken from the official Income Tax rates and allowances page, updated on 6 April 2026, and from Budget 2026 Annex A, updated on 5 November 2026. They are the figures built into our Self Assessment tax calculator.

Personal Allowance, and the £100,000 taper

The Personal Allowance is £12,570 in both 2025/26 and 2026/27. That is the amount of income a person can receive before paying Income Tax, before any taper. The income limit for the allowance is £100,000 in both years. The official page says the allowance goes down by £1 for every £2 of income above that limit, and that it can go down to zero. Zero is reached at £125,140. The taper is often the reason two people with similar salaries near that range have very different bills; our longer taper guide works through the arithmetic.

The official table also lists Married Couple’s Allowance and Blind Person’s Allowance, which our main calculator does not model. Married Couple’s Allowance for 2026/27 has a maximum of £11,700 and a minimum of £4,530 (those figures were £11,270 and £4,360 in 2025/26). Relief is given at 10%. Blind Person’s Allowance is £3,250 in 2026/27 and £3,130 in 2025/26. Marriage Allowance, which is a transfer of 10% of a unused Personal Allowance between spouses or civil partners, is listed at £1,260 for 2026/27 in Annex A and on the current Marriage Allowance page; the income-tax rates table does not tabulate a separate 2025/26 figure.

England, Northern Ireland and Wales

Tax is paid on taxable income remaining after the Personal Allowance has been deducted. For England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the official bands are the same in 2025/26 and 2026/27: a starting rate for savings of 0% up to £5,000; basic rate 20% up to £37,700; higher rate 40% from £37,701 to £125,140; and additional rate 45% over £125,141. The starting rate for savings is not a general 0% band on wages or self-employment profits. It applies to savings income, and taxable non-savings income reduces it.

A C prefix on a tax code means the rates that apply in Wales. For these two years those main rates match England and Northern Ireland. An S prefix is different: it applies the Scottish rates to non-savings, non-dividend income.

Scotland

Scotland has more bands, and two of them changed between the years. For 2025/26, after allowances, the official table is: starter 19% up to £2,827; basic 20% from £2,828 to £14,921; intermediate 21% from £14,922 to £31,092; higher 42% from £31,093 to £62,430; advanced 45% from £62,431 to £125,140; and top 48% over £125,141. For 2026/27 the starter band widens to 19% up to £3,967, and the basic band runs from £3,968 to £16,956. The intermediate, higher, advanced and top thresholds are unchanged from 2025/26, and the rates are the same.

Scottish rates apply to non-savings, non-dividend income. Savings and dividends are still taxed using the UK savings and dividend rates, not the Scottish starter-to-top scale. A calculator that put your dividends through the 19% or 42% Scottish bands would be wrong. Ours does not do that, and the result states the limitation when you select Scotland.

Dividends, savings and property

The dividend allowance is £500 in both years. You only pay tax on dividend income above that allowance. The rates did change. In 2025/26 the official ordinary, upper and additional dividend rates are 8.75%, 33.75% and 39.35%. In 2026/27 the ordinary rate is 10.75%, the upper rate is 35.75%, and the additional rate remains 39.35%. That two-point rise on the first two bands is one of the more visible Budget 2026 changes for people who take dividends from a company. Our dividend tax guide looks at it on its own.

Annex A lists a Personal Savings Allowance for 2026/27 of £1,000 for basic-rate taxpayers and £500 for higher-rate taxpayers. Additional-rate taxpayers are not given that allowance. The official income-tax rates table does not list the Personal Savings Allowance for 2025/26, which is why our calculator flags a limitation when it uses the same frozen amounts on a 2025/26 estimate. The starting rate limit for savings remains £5,000. Savings rates themselves stay at 20%, 40% and 45% in 2026/27; Annex A shows higher savings rates only from 2027/28.

Property income is also charged at the main rates in 2025/26 and 2026/27. Annex A states that for 2026/27, property income is charged at the main rates, and that separate property rates of 24%, 44% and 49% apply from the 2027/28 tax year. Applying those later rates to a 2025/26 or 2026/27 estimate would be an error. We do not do that.

Using the figures

These bands are the starting point, not a complete tax computation. Reliefs, the High Income Child Benefit Charge, and the way PAYE already collected tax through a code all affect the amount that remains to pay through Self Assessment. File the return online for free on GOV.UK; the calculation on that return is the one HMRC will use. If a later official update changes a band, the official page wins over this guide.

Where PAYE and a tax code meet these bands

Employees and many pensioners meet these rates through a tax code rather than through a year-end computation they do themselves. The code is trying, in weekly or monthly instalments, to collect the same bands the official table describes for the year. When the code is a standard 1257L, payroll is usually aiming at the full Personal Allowance and the rUK or Scottish bands that go with the prefix. When the code is BR, D0 or a Scottish letter-only code, payroll is instead told to tax all of that job at one rate, which can over- or under-collect for the year as a whole if your other income sits in a different band.

Self Assessment is often the place those over- or under-payments are settled if you already have to file, or if HMRC issues a simple assessment. A planning figure from our calculator will not correct a code. If the code looks wrong, use the official tax-code service. If you also have dividends or savings, remember that those use their own rates and, in the case of dividends, the 2026/27 rise described above, even when your salary is collected entirely through PAYE.

Keep the year straight when you compare offers of work, a dividend, or a pension start date. A payment dated 5 April 2026 belongs to 2025/26; a payment dated 6 April 2026 belongs to 2026/27 and, if it is a dividend, to the new ordinary or upper rate. The official table is organised by tax year for that reason.