UK take-home pay calculator — 2026/27
| Gross annual pay | £35,318 |
| Pension contribution | −£1,454 |
| Income tax | −£4,259 |
| National Insurance | −£1,704 |
| Take-home pay | £27,902 |
Uses 2026/27 rates: Personal Allowance £12,570, employee NI 8% to £50,270 then 2%. Pension is modelled as salary sacrifice: it reduces taxable pay for income tax and National Insurance.
At a glance
On £35,318 a year gross, you'd keep about £2,325 a month after income tax, National Insurance and pension.
How reliable is this figure?
This is an estimate, not a payslip preview. It runs on the 2026/27 tax model (Personal Allowance £12,570; employee National Insurance at 8% up to £50,270, then 2%) and the pay dataset named on this page, reviewed 23 September 2026.
Your actual take-home depends on your tax code, contract terms, overtime patterns and any benefits or deductions your employer applies. If a figure here looks surprising, check it against your latest payslip and the HMRC guidance linked under Sources below.
Scotland uses different income tax bands — toggle your nation in the calculator above. Wales follows the England bands.
Worked example: £35,318 carpenter salary, 2026/27 (England, auto-enrolment on)
| Gross annual salary | £35,318.00 |
| Auto-enrolment pension (5%) | −£1,453.90 |
| Income tax (20% band) | −£4,258.82 |
| Employee National Insurance | −£1,703.53 |
| Annual take-home pay | £27,901.75 |
| Monthly take-home pay | £2,325.15 |
| Weekly take-home | £536.57 |
Assumptions and pay data
- England income tax bands for 2026/27 (6 April 2026 – 5 April 2027)
- Auto-enrolment pension at 5% of qualifying earnings (£6,240–£50,270), salary-sacrifice treatment
- Full-time employee — NOT a CIS subcontractor
- No student loan repayments and no other deductions
- Full 2026/27 tax model explained in the 2026/27 tax guide
Making sense of carpenter pay
From £16.98 an hour to an annual salary
The ONS median of £16.98 an hour is the cleanest anchor in carpentry pay — but an hourly rate is not a salary until you fix the hours. At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, £16.98 becomes £35,318 a year. At 45 hours — a normal week on a busy site — it becomes £39,733. At 37.5 hours, the standard workshop week for a bench joiner, it becomes £33,080. Same trade, same median rate, a £6,653 spread in annual gross between the shortest and longest week.
This is why the calculator asks for your hours. Two carpenters on identical hourly rates can take home very different amounts, and comparing a workshop bench joiner's 37.5-hour wage with a site carpenter's 45-hour week on the headline number alone misleads. Fix the hours first, then compare.
The weekly median of £673.70 tells the same story from the other end: it is the pay employers actually ran through payrolls in April 2025, part-timers included, which is why it annualises to £35,032 — a shade under the £35,318 forty-hour figure. Treat £35,318 as the full-time employed benchmark and move from there.
Day-rate maths with unpaid weeks
Day-rate carpenters quote £140 to £200 a day and naturally assume the higher daily figure means higher annual pay. Do the honest maths: £136 a day — the ONS median worked out at eight hours — times five days times 52 weeks is £35,360, essentially the £35,318 salaried anchor. But self-employed carpenters do not get 52 paid weeks.
Between Christmas shutdown, gaps between contracts, wet weather and the odd week of no work, four unpaid weeks a year is realistic for a site carpenter. That turns the sum into £136 × 5 × 48 = £32,640 — nearly £2,700 below the salaried benchmark. The day rate is higher, the year is shorter, and the pension, holiday pay and sick pay that the employee gets are all missing from the subcontractor's side of the ledger.
None of this means the day rate is a bad deal — a £160 day rate across 48 weeks is £38,400 gross, comfortably ahead. It means the comparison has to use real weeks. And remember the CIS layer: if that £136-a-day figure is labour under CIS, 20% is deducted at source before it reaches you, so the cash that lands is £108.80 a day — with the difference coming back at Self Assessment.
Price work: a worked example
Price work is where carpentry pay stops looking like a wage. Take door hanging at an example price of £45 a door: a carpenter who hangs eight doors in a day grosses £360 for the day — more than double the £136-a-day employed median. Run the year at five days and 48 weeks and the gross is £86,400. That is the number that draws chippies into price work, and on a good run of well-prepared plots it is real.
The honest version of the same arithmetic is what happens on a bad plot. Four doors in a day — out-of-square frames, doors needing trimming, snagging from the last trade — is £180 for the same hours, and a week of that is £900 against the £1,800 the good week paid. Price work has no floor and no ceiling; the day rate has both. The average across a year, not the best day, is the figure to budget from.
Under CIS, price work is treated as labour for the deduction — the 20% comes off the invoice's labour element regardless of whether it was priced per door, per metre or per kitchen. The arithmetic above is gross of everything: tax, National Insurance, pension and CIS all come out after. Example pricing throughout this page is stated as example pricing, not as quoted rates.
Where the 20% band covers everything
At £35,318, the entire taxable income sits inside the basic-rate band, which runs to £50,270 in 2026/27 — and that shapes the whole worked example. Income tax is a flat £4,258.82 (20% of everything above the £12,570 Personal Allowance, after the pension contribution is taken off). National Insurance is £1,703.53 (8% of earnings between £12,570 and £50,270). Nothing touches the 40% band.
The pension line deserves a look too. Auto-enrolment at 5% is calculated on qualifying earnings — £6,240 to £50,270 — not on the whole salary. On £35,318 that is 5% of £29,078, which is £1,453.90. Because the calculator models it as salary sacrifice, that £1,453.90 reduces both income tax and National Insurance, which is why the take-home is a little higher than a straight deduction would give.
The 40% band only becomes relevant for carpenters with serious overtime or a strong price-work year: a site carpenter grossing £52,000 would have £1,730 taxed at 40%. Only the slice above £50,270 is taxed at 40% — everything below is taxed exactly as the worked example shows. Overtime is never 'not worth it' because of tax; you keep at least 60p of every extra pound before NI and pension.
About this calculator
How the tax engine works
The calculator runs the full 2026/27 England tax model on whatever salary or hourly rate you enter: Personal Allowance £12,570, basic rate 20% to £50,270, employee National Insurance at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above, and auto-enrolment pension at 5% of qualifying earnings (£6,240–£50,270) with salary-sacrifice treatment. The worked example above is engine-computed, not estimated — £35,318 in gives £27,901.75 a year out, every line shown.
Carpenters mostly live below the higher-rate threshold, which keeps the tax line simple: at £35,318 the whole calculation is basic rate plus National Insurance. Tick the Scotland option and the engine switches to Scottish bands instead — the 21% band starting at £29,527 and the 42% band at £43,663 bite earlier than England's bands, so a Scottish carpenter's monthly figure runs slightly lower on the same salary. The full band tables live in the 2026/27 tax guide linked below.
Reviewed and updated
The pay anchor and the worked example were last reviewed on 23 September 2026 against the ONS ASHE 2025 provisional figures for carpenters and joiners (SOC 2020 5316). The tax model covers 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. If you are comparing a job offer, enter the actual salary and your actual weekly hours — the annualised figure is only as honest as the hours behind it, and the day-rate section above shows why paid weeks matter more than the daily figure.
Carpenter take-home pay FAQs
What is a good carpenter salary in the UK in 2026?
The ONS median is £35,318 a year (£16.98 an hour at 40 hours a week), so anything around that is a normal employed carpenter salary. Second-fix specialists and shuttering carpenters earning the equivalent of £38,000–£45,000 are doing well; workshop bench joiners often sit a little below the median in exchange for steady hours.
Always check the hours behind the salary. £35,318 for a 37.5-hour workshop week is a better hourly deal than £38,000 for a 50-hour site week once you work it out per hour.
How much does a carpenter take home on £35,318?
£27,901.75 a year — £2,325.15 a month, or £536.57 a week — after income tax (£4,258.82), employee National Insurance (£1,703.53) and auto-enrolment pension (£1,453.90). Those are 2026/27 England figures with no student loan.
That is the employed benchmark: the median carpenter keeps 79p of every gross pound. Put your own salary into the calculator above to see your exact monthly figure.
How much is £16.98 an hour as an annual salary?
It depends on the hours. £16.98 × 40 hours × 52 weeks = £35,318 a year. £16.98 × 45 hours × 52 = £39,733. £16.98 × 37.5 hours × 52 = £33,080.
The 7.5-hour gap between a workshop week and a busy site week is worth £6,653 of gross pay at the same hourly rate — which is why hourly comparisons without hours attached are meaningless. Fix your real weekly hours before comparing offers.
I am paid a day rate — can I use this calculator?
Yes, as a rough guide: multiply your day rate by your real paid days per year and enter the result as the gross salary. A £150 day rate across 48 paid weeks is £36,000 gross — but the same rate across a full 52 weeks would be £39,000, so be honest about unpaid weeks.
The assumptions will not match your position exactly: the calculator models an employee with auto-enrolment pension, while day-rate carpenters are usually self-employed. Use it for the tax picture on your annual gross, not as a payslip.
I work under CIS — does this calculator show what I will actually receive?
Not directly. This calculator models an employed carpenter's tax position; it does not apply the 20% (or 30%) CIS deduction that your contractor takes from each invoice's labour element. On £35,318 of CIS labour income, 20% — £7,063.60 — would be deducted at source across the year before the money reached you.
The CIS deductions are advance payments toward the same tax and National Insurance this calculator computes, so the final tax bill is similar — the difference is timing. Read the carpenter CIS and pay guide alongside this page for the full invoice-to-bank picture.
Does the calculator include my pension?
Yes — auto-enrolment at 5% of qualifying earnings (£6,240–£50,270) is switched on by default, treated as salary sacrifice. On £35,318 that is £1,453.90 a year, and it reduces both income tax and National Insurance.
If you have opted out, your take-home will be higher than shown — but you also lose the employer contribution, so opting out is rarely the bargain it looks like on the payslip. Self-employed carpenters have no auto-enrolment at all: pension is entirely your own arrangement.
What about student loan repayments?
This calculator does not deduct student loan repayments — the worked example assumes no student loan. In reality, repayments come off after tax and National Insurance as a percentage of earnings above the threshold, which lowers the monthly figure shown here.
If you have a Plan 1, Plan 2 or postgraduate loan, run your salary through the student loan calculator as well and subtract the monthly repayment from the take-home shown here.
I work in Scotland — does this calculator work for me?
Yes. Use the Scotland option under the calculator and the engine switches to Scottish income tax bands: 19% to £16,537, 20% to £29,526, 21% to £43,662, 42% to £75,000, 45% to £125,140 and 48% above £125,140. The Personal Allowance of £12,570 is the same UK-wide.
A £35,318 salary leaves slightly less in Scotland than in England because of the 21% band. National Insurance and auto-enrolment pension work identically in both nations.
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Sources
- ONS — Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional). SOC 2020 occupation 5316 (carpenters and joiners), all employees, pay period April 2025: median gross hourly pay £16.98; median gross weekly pay £673.70. £16.98 × 40 hours × 52 weeks = £35,318 gross a year. Accessed 23 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — Income Tax rates and allowances 2026/27. Personal Allowance £12,570; 20% to £50,270, 40% to £125,140, 45% above; bands frozen to 5 April 2031 (Autumn Budget 2025). Accessed 23 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — National Insurance rates 2026/27. Employee Class 1: 8% on £12,570–£50,270, 2% above. Accessed 23 September 2026.
These are estimates for guidance only, not financial advice. Figures are taken from the sources listed above and were correct when this page was reviewed. Your actual pay depends on your contract, hours and tax code — check your payslip and HMRC guidance if anything looks off.