Income tax calculator Scotland
Scottish income tax on your earnings, band by band across all six bands — which band you are in, and what your next pound costs.
Calculator
Salary, wages, pension income, rental profit or self-employed profit — before tax, and before any pension contribution or salary sacrifice. This is the income the six Scottish bands apply to.
Do not add savings interest or dividends here. Scottish rates apply to earned income only; interest and dividends are charged on UK-wide bands wherever in the UK you live. The Scotland tax calculator takes all three and shows which is which.
Scottish rates and bands are set by the Scottish Parliament each year and are not the same as the UK ones.
This page works out income tax only. National Insurance is not devolved and is not included here — for salary in and net pay out, use the take home pay calculator for Scotland.
Your Scottish income tax, band by band
Scottish income tax: £8,982.05
On £50,000 of earnings that is an effective rate of 17.96%, leaving £41,017.95 before National Insurance.
This is income tax, not take-home pay. National Insurance is deducted from earnings as well, it is not devolved — the rates and thresholds are the same across the whole UK — and it is not in the figure above. What you actually keep is less than £41,017.95. The take home pay calculator for Scotland does both and shows a monthly figure.
Your income tax, in one table
| Earned income | £50,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Less personal allowance used | −£12,570.00 |
| Taxable income | £37,430.00 |
| Scottish income tax | £8,982.05 |
The personal allowance row is a subtraction, not a statutory constant: above £100,000 the allowance tapers away, and the figure shown is the one this income actually used. The personal allowance itself is reserved to the UK Parliament, not devolved — Scotland sets the rates and the bands above it, and not the allowance underneath it.
Your income, band by band
Scotland charges earned income across six bands where England, Wales and Northern Ireland use three. Only the bands your own income reaches appear here; every band, reached or not, is in the table below it.
| Band | Income in this band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter rate | £3,967.00 | 19.00% | £753.73 |
| Basic rate | £12,989.00 | 20.00% | £2,597.80 |
| Intermediate rate | £14,136.00 | 21.00% | £2,968.56 |
| Higher rate | £6,338.00 | 42.00% | £2,661.96 |
| Total | £37,430.00 | £8,982.05 |
All six Scottish bands, in gross income
The figures below are the ones gov.scot publishes — gross income, before the personal allowance is taken off. They are worked out here from the taxable-income thresholds the calculation actually uses, so the two cannot disagree.
| Band | Gross income | Rate | Your income here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter rate | £12,571 to £16,537 | 19.00% | £3,967.00 |
| Basic rate | £16,538 to £29,526 | 20.00% | £12,989.00 |
| Intermediate rate | £29,527 to £43,662 | 21.00% | £14,136.00 |
| Higher rate — you are here | £43,663 to £75,000 | 42.00% | £6,338.00 |
| Advanced rate | £75,001 to £125,140 | 45.00% | — |
| Top rate | £125,141 and above | 48.00% | — |
Those gross figures assume the full £12,570 personal allowance and nothing else. A marriage allowance transfer, a blind person’s allowance, or a tax code carrying an underpayment or a benefit in kind moves every one of them. Above £100,000 the allowance tapers away, which is why the top band starts at the same figure in gross as in taxable income — by then there is no allowance left to add.
Where your next pound goes
- Income tax on your next £1 of earnings: 42.00%. That figure is measured by the engine against your own income, not read off a rate table — inside the personal allowance taper it is one and a half times whichever band rate applies, which is higher for a Scottish taxpayer than the figure usually quoted for the rest of the UK and is why it can exceed every rate printed on this page. It covers income tax on earned income and nothing else: no National Insurance, no savings interest, no dividends.
Another £25,000 of earnings takes you into the Advanced rate band.
The engine measures that gap as £25,000 of taxable income, which is a different figure and not the one to act on. Here your allowance is fully used and your income is outside the taper, so the two happen to coincide.
Five things this figure does not know
It does not include National Insurance
National Insurance is not devolved: the thresholds and rates are identical across the whole UK, and they are not in the figure above. On employment income an employer deducts it from the same pay packet as the income tax, so the amount that reaches your bank account is well below £41,017.95. The take home pay calculator for Scotland adds it.
It does not know about student loan repayments
Repayments are collected alongside income tax and National Insurance, and nothing on this page models them — not the plan types, not the thresholds, not the rates. Scotland’s Plan 4 has a different threshold from the plans used elsewhere in the UK, and none of them are here.
It does not know about your pension contributions
This page has no pension input. The income tax engine takes one — both net pay arrangements and relief at source, the mechanism that extends the basic-rate band so a contribution shelters higher-rate income — but this page passes it nothing, so anyone contributing to a pension is shown more income tax here than they will actually owe. There is no box to enter it in and no correction to apply on the page. The pension tax relief calculator works out the band extension.
It does not know your tax code
The calculation assumes the standard personal allowance for the year and no other adjustment. A tax code carrying a benefit in kind, an underpayment collected through PAYE, a marriage allowance transfer or a blind person’s allowance changes the allowance and therefore every band boundary in the tables above.
It does not tax savings interest, dividends or gains
Those are charged on UK-wide bands wherever in the UK you live — the Scottish rates simply do not apply to them, which is the part most often got wrong. Entering interest or dividends in the earnings box would tax them at Scottish rates and produce a confident wrong answer. The Scotland tax calculator takes all three separately.
Worked example
Crossing a band does not re-rate everything underneath it. That is the single most common worry about a six-band system, and one pound of income is enough to show it is unfounded.
Rhona earns £43,662. That is the last pound of the intermediate rate, and her income tax is £6,320.09:
| Band | Income in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter rate | £3,967.00 | 19.00% | £753.73 |
| Basic rate | £12,989.00 | 20.00% | £2,597.80 |
| Intermediate rate | £14,136.00 | 21.00% | £2,968.56 |
| Total | £6,320.09 |
Kirsty earns one pound more. That single pound is charged at the higher rate, and nothing below it moves — so her income tax is £6,320.51, exactly £0.42 more than Rhona’s:
| Band | Income in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter rate | £3,967.00 | 19.00% | £753.73 |
| Basic rate | £12,989.00 | 20.00% | £2,597.80 |
| Intermediate rate | £14,136.00 | 21.00% | £2,968.56 |
| Higher rate | £1.00 | 42.00% | £0.42 |
| Total | £6,320.51 |
Kirsty is now a higher-rate taxpayer in Scotland, and her £43,662 of income underneath is taxed exactly as it was before. A pay rise cannot leave you worse off by crossing one of these thresholds.
The one place the marginal rate really does jump is the personal allowance taper. Ewan earns £110,000. His personal allowance has been reduced from £12,570 to £7,570.00 because every £2 above £100,000 withdraws £1 of it, so his income tax is £37,482.05 and his next £1 of earnings costs 67.50% — measured by the engine, and higher than any rate printed in the band table. The taper is a UK-wide rule applied to a Scottish rate, which is why the figure is not the one usually quoted south of the border.
Methodology and sources
The calculation, in order
- Start from the earned income you entered — salary, wages, pension, rental profit or self-employed profit.
- Deduct the personal allowance that applies to that income. It is £12,570 and it is set by the UK Parliament, not by Scotland. Above £100,000 it tapers away at £1 for every £2 of income, so this step runs through the engine rather than subtracting a constant.
- Charge what is left across the six Scottish bands, in order, each pound at the rate of the band it falls in. Crossing a threshold re-rates nothing beneath it.
- Measure the rate on the next pound by asking the engine what one more pound of income costs, rather than by comparing the income to a threshold and picking a rate. Those two answers differ at exactly the interesting points.
Rates and allowances
| Figure | 2025/26 | 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|
| Personal allowance | £12,570 | £12,570 |
| Personal allowance taper starts at | £100,000 | £100,000 |
| Scottish bands on earned income (thresholds are taxable income) | Starter rate 19.00% from £0; Basic rate 20.00% from £2,827; Intermediate rate 21.00% from £14,921; Higher rate 42.00% from £31,092; Advanced rate 45.00% from £62,430; Top rate 48.00% from £125,140 | Starter rate 19.00% from £0; Basic rate 20.00% from £3,967; Intermediate rate 21.00% from £16,956; Higher rate 42.00% from £31,092; Advanced rate 45.00% from £62,430; Top rate 48.00% from £125,140 |
| England, Wales and Northern Ireland, for comparison | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 |
| Savings interest — UK-wide, not Scottish | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 |
| Dividends — UK-wide, not Scottish | Ordinary rate 8.75% from £0; Upper rate 33.75% from £37,700; Additional rate 39.35% from £125,140 | Ordinary rate 10.75% from £0; Upper rate 35.75% from £37,700; Additional rate 39.35% from £125,140 |
The savings and dividend rows in that table are the UK ones, and they are shown under a Scottish heading on purpose. The rules file composes the Scottish region from a Scottish earned-income schedule and the same savings, dividend and capital gains schedules every other part of the UK uses. A Scottish taxpayer with £2,000 of dividends is charged at the UK dividend rates, and a page that quietly applied 42% to them would be wrong by a large margin. This page takes no savings or dividend figure at all; the Scotland tax calculator takes all three.
What this page does not model
- National Insurance. Not devolved, not included, and deducted from earnings as well — so the amount left over is not take-home pay.
- Student loan repayments, including Scotland’s Plan 4.
- Pension contributions. This page passes the engine no contribution, so no band extension is applied — even though the engine models one.
- Your tax code, the marriage allowance and the blind person’s allowance — all of which move the personal allowance and therefore every band boundary.
- Savings interest, dividends and capital gains, which are charged on UK-wide bands.
Where the figures come from
- gov.uk — Income tax in Scotland
- gov.scot — Scottish income tax rates and bands
- gov.uk — Income tax rates and allowances: current and past
- gov.uk — Income over £100,000
The rates and allowances in the table above were verified against gov.uk and gov.scot on 12 August 2026. That check covers the published figures this page computes with. It does not verify any result the page produces, and it has not yet been signed off by a person — the verification recorded in the source repository is an automated one. Check anything that matters against gov.uk or with an accountant.
Every calculation runs in your browser. There is no application server and no database, so nothing you type is transmitted or stored. A share link is the exception: it carries your figures in the URL. More on what that means. Information, not advice.
Frequently asked questions
- How many income tax bands does Scotland have?
Six, where England, Wales and Northern Ireland have three. For 2026/27 they are the starter rate on £12,571 to £16,537, the basic rate on £16,538 to £29,526, the intermediate rate on £29,527 to £43,662, the higher rate on £43,663 to £75,000, the advanced rate on £75,001 to £125,140 and the top rate on £125,141 and above — all assuming the full personal allowance. Each pound is charged at the rate of the band it falls in, so crossing a threshold changes the rate on the next pound and on nothing underneath it.
- Which income do the Scottish rates apply to?
Earned income only: employment income, pensions, rental profit and self-employed profit. Savings interest, dividends and capital gains are charged on UK-wide bands wherever in the UK you live, and National Insurance is not devolved at all. This is the single most common mistake made about Scottish income tax, and it is why this calculator takes an earnings figure and refuses to take an interest or dividend one.
- Does Scotland set the personal allowance?
No. The personal allowance is reserved to the UK Parliament and is £12,570 for 2026/27 across the whole UK. Scotland sets the rates and the thresholds above it. That is why the Scottish band thresholds you see published in gross income all sit a personal allowance above the taxable-income thresholds the calculation actually uses — and why the taper above £100,000 applies in Scotland exactly as it does elsewhere.
- Will a pay rise that crosses a band leave me worse off?
No. Only the pounds above the threshold are charged at the higher rate; everything underneath is taxed exactly as it was. The worked example on this page takes two people one pound apart across the higher-rate threshold and shows the whole difference is the tax on that one pound. The one place a rate genuinely jumps is the personal allowance taper above £100,000, where each extra £2 of income also withdraws £1 of allowance — and the calculator measures that rate rather than quoting one.
- Is this my take-home pay?
No. This page works out income tax and nothing else. National Insurance is deducted from earnings as well, it is not devolved, and it is not in the figure here — so what reaches your bank account is lower. Use the take home pay calculator for Scotland for salary in and net pay out, including National Insurance and a monthly figure.
- Why is my marginal rate higher than any band rate on the page?
Because of the personal allowance taper. Above £100,000 of income the allowance is withdrawn by £1 for every £2 earned, so an extra pound of income exposes a pound and a half to tax. The effect multiplies whichever band rate applies rather than producing a fixed figure, so it is higher in Scotland than the rate usually quoted for the rest of the UK. This calculator measures the rate by asking the engine what one more pound costs, so the number on the page is the one that applies to your income rather than a rule of thumb.
- Does it include my pension contributions or student loan?
No, and there are no boxes for them. The income tax engine accepts a pension contribution and extends the rate limits for relief at source, but this page passes it nothing, so anyone paying into a pension is shown more income tax here than they will owe. Student loan and postgraduate loan repayments are not modelled either — including Plan 4, the Scottish plan, which has a different threshold from the plans used elsewhere in the UK.
- Does the calculator know my tax code?
No. It assumes the standard personal allowance for the year and no other adjustment. A tax code carrying a benefit in kind, an underpayment being collected through PAYE, a marriage allowance transfer or a blind person’s allowance changes the allowance, and every gross band boundary shown on this page moves with it. The taxable-income thresholds do not move; the gross figures do.