Enter a salary in today's money. For every tax year since 1976/77 the page turns it into that year's pounds, applies that year's income tax and employee National Insurance rules, then converts the bill back to today's money so the years compare fairly.
£
A single employee in England with one job and no other income, claiming only the basic Personal Allowance. Inflation uses the Consumer Prices Index.
Your tax over time
Income tax plus National Insurance
£ a year, today's money
Effective rate
% of salary
Year by year
Where it went
Share of public spending by area
% of spending on services
Total, today's money£0
Spending shares as a table
Notes and simplifications
Single person, basic allowance only. Every year uses the single person's allowance (before 1990) or the Personal Allowance (from 1990). Before independent taxation in April 1990 a husband claimed the married man's allowance and his wife's earnings were taxed with his; from 1990 to 2000 married couples got the Married Couple's Allowance. None of these, and no age-related, blind person's or other allowances, are included.
Not contracted out. National Insurance uses the standard (contracted-in) employee rate. Until April 2016 many people in workplace salary-related pension schemes were contracted out and paid a lower rate on earnings between the lower and upper limits (2.5 points lower in 1978/79, falling to 1.4 points by 2012/13). Married women and widows paying the reduced rate are not covered either.
How National Insurance worked. Until October 1985, once weekly pay reached the lower earnings limit, the employee rate applied to all pay up to the upper limit, not just the part above the threshold. From October 1985 to October 1989 the rate on all pay was 5%, 7% or 9% depending on which earnings band you fell in. From October 1989 to April 1999 there was a 2% charge on pay up to the lower limit plus the main rate above it. From April 1999 the main rate applied only above a threshold, and from 2003/04 a 1% (later 2%) rate applied above the upper limit.
Even weekly pay. National Insurance is worked out per pay period, so the page assumes the salary is paid evenly through the year and uses annual equivalents of the weekly limits (or HMRC's own annual figures from 2020/21). Years with a mid-year change (1985/86, 1989/90, 2022/23 and 2023/24) are split by the number of days each set of rules applied.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland rules. Scotland has set its own income tax bands since 2017/18. They are not used here; the calculator has them for recent years.
Income tax and employee National Insurance are only part of what pays for public services, so the split of your bill is an illustration of where the whole pot went, not a record of your own money. This is an estimate, not tax advice.
Data sources
All figures were downloaded from the publishers below; nothing was typed in from memory. The data file records which file each series came from, with a checksum, and the build script cross-checks the sources against each other.
Income tax rates and bands:IFS Fiscal Facts, income tax spreadsheet (2023 edition); HMRC Table A.2, Rates of Income Tax (1990/91 to 2026/27); and HMRC Table TA.2, Rates of Income Tax: 1973-74 to 1989-90 for each higher-rate band before 1988 (the IFS sheet gives only the range of rates). HMRC's own copy of TA.2 sits on the National Archives web archive, which could not be downloaded automatically, so the copy used is the one held by the Stanford Digital Repository; its basic-rate limits and rates match the IFS figures for every year.
Total spending check:OBR public finances databank (September 2026). It has total managed expenditure and debt interest back to the 1940s but no split by function, so it is used only to check PESA's totals.