Skip to content
InvestmentCalculator
All calculators

Calculator

Your taxable profit for the year — turnover less your allowable expenses and capital allowances. Not your turnover, and not what landed in your bank account. This page taxes the figure you enter; it cannot work it out for you.

Employment, pension or rental income taxed alongside your profit. It shares your income tax bands, so it changes the rate your profit meets — but it is not self-employed profit, so no Class 4 National Insurance is charged on it here.

Income tax on self-employed profit is devolved to Scotland, which has six bands rather than three. National Insurance is not devolved: your Class 4 and Class 2 position is identical wherever in the UK you live.

Class 4 National Insurance starts at £12,570 of profit and the rate falls above £50,270. Both are limits on profit alone, so other income never uses them up.

Your tax and National Insurance, band by band

Income tax and National Insurance: £13,888.60

On £60,000 of income that leaves £46,111.40, an effective rate of 23.15% across both bills.

If you are repaying a student loan, the figure above is too high. Student loan and postgraduate loan repayments are collected through self assessment alongside the tax and National Insurance shown here, and this calculator does not model them at all — no plan, no threshold, no rate. On a typical undergraduate plan a self-employed person pays 9% of profit above the plan’s threshold on top of everything below, so what you actually keep is less than £46,111.40. Check your plan type and threshold on gov.uk before you rely on this.

The two bills, side by side

Profit from self-employment£60,000.00
Less personal allowance used£12,570.00
Taxable income£47,430.00
Income tax£11,432.00
Class 4 National Insurance£2,456.60
Class 2 National Insurance£0.00
Total due£13,888.60
Left after both£46,111.40

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.

Income tax, band by band

Charged on your profit and any other income together, at England or Northern Ireland rates. This is the part of the bill that changes when you move between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Taxable income, band by band
BandIncome in this bandRateTax
Basic rate£37,700.0020.00%£7,540.00
Higher rate£9,730.0040.00%£3,892.00
Income tax£47,430.00£11,432.00

Class 4 National Insurance, band by band

Charged on your profit alone, at the same rates everywhere in the UK. National Insurance is not devolved, so nothing in this table moves if you change the region above — and other income never uses up the £12,570 starting point.

Profit, band by band
BandProfit in this bandRateNational Insurance
Main rate£37,700.006.00%£2,262.00
Upper rate£9,730.002.00%£194.60
Class 4 total£2,456.60

Your profit is above the £50,270 upper profits limit, so the National Insurance rate on your next pound of profit is 2.00%, not 6.00%. It is the one rate in the UK system that goes down as you earn more — and it goes down at almost exactly the profit where income tax steps up, which is why the two tables above have to be read together rather than added into a single “tax rate”.

Class 2 National Insurance

Your profit is at or above the £7,105 small profits threshold, so you are credited with a qualifying year for the state pension at no cost. Class 2 is no longer a compulsory charge, which is why the Class 2 line in the table above is £0.00.

Class 2 you must pay£0.00
Weekly voluntary rate for 2026/27 (published by HMRC)£3.65
A full year of it, at 52 weeks — this site’s arithmetic, not an HMRC figure£189.80

HMRC publishes no annual figure for Class 2 — only the weekly rate. The annual line above is £3.65 × 52, done here, and there is no gov.uk page carrying it for you to check against. Treat the weekly rate as the published number and the annual one as a convenience. Multiplying by 52 is not a safe habit in general: where HMRC does publish annual National Insurance thresholds they are deliberately not the weekly ones times 52, the two disagree by enough to change an answer, and it is the published annual figure that governs an annual calculation. This calculator uses HMRC’s own annual figures everywhere one exists. Class 2 is the case where none does. Contributions are also due for each week you are self-employed, so a part year costs less than the line above.

Where your next pound of profit goes

  • Income tax on your next £1 of profit: 40.00%. That figure is measured by the engine, not read off a rate table — inside the personal allowance taper it is one and a half times the band rate, which is why it can be higher than any rate printed on this page.
  • Class 4 National Insurance on that same £1: 2.00%. Measured by asking the National Insurance engine what one more pound of profit costs, rather than by comparing your profit to the limits and picking a rate — at exactly the £50,270 limit those two answers differ, and the measured one is the right one.

Another £65,140 of income takes you into the Additional rate band.

The engine measures that gap as £77,710 of taxable income, which is a different figure and not the one to act on. Above £100,000 each extra £1 of income also withdraws 50p of personal allowance, so £1 of profit exposes £1.50 of taxable income and the gap closes half as fast again.

Five things this figure does not know

It does not know about student loan repayments

Repayments are collected through self assessment with your tax and National Insurance, and nothing on this page models them — not the plan types, not the thresholds, not the rates. If you are repaying, what you keep is less than £46,111.40, and the gap is 9% of profit above your plan’s threshold on the usual undergraduate plans, plus 6% again on a postgraduate loan.

It does not know about your pension contributions

This page has no pension input. Relief at source — the mechanism that extends your basic-rate band so a contribution shelters higher-rate income — is modelled by the engine, but nothing on this page reaches it, so a self-employed person paying into a personal pension is shown more income tax than they will actually owe. There is no box to enter it in and no correction to apply on the page; the figure simply does not include it. The pension tax relief calculator works out the band extension. Class 4 National Insurance is unaffected either way — pension contributions do not reduce it.

It does not work out your profit

You supply the profit; this page taxes it. Turnover, allowable expenses, capital allowances, the trading allowance, use-of-home and vehicle claims, and any loss brought forward are all yours to work out or your accountant’s. Type a turnover figure into the profit box and every number on this page is arithmetic on the wrong input, with nothing on screen to say so.

It does not know how self assessment will bill you

Everything above is the liability for one tax year. HMRC does not collect it in one payment. On top of the balancing payment due on 31 January you will usually be asked for payments on account — two instalments towards the next year, each half of this year’s bill, due on 31 January and 31 July. So a first January demand after a profitable year can be around one and a half times the figure shown here. Payments on account cover income tax and Class 4 National Insurance; they do not include capital gains tax or student loan repayments.

It does not know about any employment you also have

If you have a job as well as a trade, your employer deducts Class 1 National Insurance from the wages, and this page does not compute Class 1. The other-income box feeds income tax only. There are also annual maximum rules that can cap the total National Insurance a person pays across Class 1 and Class 4 in one year, and those are not modelled either.

Worked example

Two sole traders make the same £60,000 profit in 2026/27. One lives in Cardiff, the other in Glasgow. They pay different income tax and identical National Insurance, which is the fact this page exists to make visible.

Rhys, in Wales. His personal allowance leaves £47,430.00 of taxable income, taxed on the same three bands as England and Northern Ireland:

Rhys’s income tax, band by band
BandIncome in bandRateTax
Basic rate£37,700.0020.00%£7,540.00
Higher rate£9,730.0040.00%£3,892.00
Total£11,432.00

Ailsa, in Scotland. The same profit meets six bands rather than three, so her income tax comes to £13,182.05 £1,750.05 more than Rhys pays on the same money:

Ailsa’s income tax, band by band
BandIncome in bandRateTax
Starter rate£3,967.0019.00%£753.73
Basic rate£12,989.0020.00%£2,597.80
Intermediate rate£14,136.0021.00%£2,968.56
Higher rate£16,338.0042.00%£6,861.96
Total£13,182.05

Their Class 4 National Insurance is the same to the penny £2,456.60 each — because National Insurance is not devolved. Note what the second row does: above the £50,270 upper profits limit the rate falls from 6.00% to 2.00%.

Class 4 National Insurance — identical in Cardiff and in Glasgow
BandProfit in bandRateNational Insurance
Main rate£37,700.006.00%£2,262.00
Upper rate£9,730.002.00%£194.60
Total£2,456.60

Rhys is left with £46,111.40 and Ailsa with £44,361.35, before either of them has thought about a student loan, a pension contribution, or the payments on account HMRC will ask for in January.

And a third trader, on £6,000 of profit, pays nothing at all. That is below the personal allowance, below the £12,570 Class 4 starting point, and below the £7,105 small profits threshold — so their income tax is £0.00, their Class 4 is £0.00, and they earn no automatic qualifying year for the state pension. They may pay Class 2 voluntarily at £3.65 a week to protect that record. It is a choice, so it is not in any total on this page.

Methodology and sources

The calculation, in order

  1. Start from the profit you entered — turnover less allowable expenses and capital allowances. This page does not work that figure out for you.
  2. Add any other taxable income. The sum is the income tax base: one set of bands covers everything.
  3. Deduct the personal allowance the income tax engine says applies to that total. Above £100,000 it tapers away, and the engine handles that rather than this page subtracting a fixed figure.
  4. Tax what is left band by band, at the rates for the region you chose. Scotland has its own bands for this kind of income; England, Wales and Northern Ireland share one set.
  5. Charge Class 4 National Insurance on the profit alone — not on the total. It starts at £12,570 of profit, runs at 6.00% to £50,270, and then drops to 2.00% above it. These rates and limits are UK-wide.
  6. Report the Class 2 position. It is a status rather than a charge: at or above £7,105 of profit a qualifying year is credited at no cost, and below it contributions may be made voluntarily. Nothing compulsory is added to the total.
  7. Subtract the income tax and the National Insurance from the income. That is what is left.

Rates and allowances

Figure2025/262026/27
Personal allowance£12,570£12,570
Personal allowance taper starts at£100,000£100,000
Class 4 lower profits limit£12,570£12,570
Class 4 upper profits limit£50,270£50,270
Class 4 rate — main / above the upper limit6.00% / 2.00%6.00% / 2.00%
Class 2 small profits threshold£6,845£7,105
Class 2 weekly voluntary rate£3.50£3.65
Income tax bands — England, Wales and Northern IrelandBasic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140
Income tax bands — ScotlandStarter 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 £125,140Starter 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

There is no annual Class 2 figure in that table, and that is not an omission. HMRC publishes a weekly Class 2 rate and no annual one. Where this calculator shows an annual voluntary cost it is the weekly rate multiplied by 52, done by this software, and there is no published figure to check it against. Everywhere HMRC does publish an annual National Insurance threshold, this calculator uses that published annual figure rather than a weekly one multiplied out — the two are not the same, deliberately, and using the wrong one changes the answer.

What this page does not model

  • Student loan and postgraduate loan repayments. Collected through self assessment alongside this bill, and absent here — so the amount left over is too high for anyone repaying.
  • Pension contributions. This page passes the income tax engine no contribution, so its relief-at-source band extension never applies here.
  • The profit itself. No turnover, no expenses, no capital allowances, no trading allowance, no losses carried forward.
  • Payments on account. The figure is a tax-year liability, not a January demand.
  • Class 1 National Insurance on any employment you also have, and the annual maximum rules that can cap National Insurance across classes.

Where the figures come from

The rates and allowances in the table above were verified against gov.uk 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.

Everything is calculated in your browser. There is no application server and no database, so nothing you type here is transmitted or stored. A share link is the exception: it puts your figures in the URL, and opening one is an ordinary request that carries them to the host. More on what that means. Information, not advice.

Frequently asked questions

How much tax will I pay on my self-employed profit?

There are two bills, not one. Income tax is charged on your profit together with any other taxable income you have, after the personal allowance, at the bands for where you live. Class 4 National Insurance is charged on the profit alone, at 6.00% between £12,570 and £50,270 of profit and 2.00% above that, everywhere in the UK. The calculator above shows each of them band by band rather than blending them into a single rate, because they are charged on different amounts and cross their thresholds at different points.

Do I still have to pay Class 2 National Insurance?

No — Class 2 is no longer a compulsory charge. If your profit is at or above the £7,105 small profits threshold for 2026/27 you are credited with a qualifying year towards your state pension without paying anything, which is why the Class 2 line in the calculator reads £0. If your profit is below that threshold you get no automatic qualifying year, but you may choose to pay Class 2 voluntarily at £3.65 a week to protect your record. That is a choice, so this calculator reports it and does not add it to what you owe.

Is there an annual Class 2 rate?

Not a published one. HMRC publishes a weekly Class 2 rate and no annual figure at all, so any yearly Class 2 number you see anywhere — including on this page — is the weekly rate multiplied out by somebody. This calculator shows the multiplication so you can see what it did. Contributions are due for each week you are self-employed, so a part year is not a full year’s worth.

Should I enter my turnover or my profit?

Your profit. That is turnover less your allowable expenses and capital allowances, and it is the figure both HMRC and this calculator tax. Working it out is the part this page cannot do for you: it has no way to tell a turnover figure from a profit one, so typing the wrong one produces a confident answer that is too high with nothing on screen to say so.

Does this include student loan repayments?

No. Student loan and postgraduate loan repayments are collected through self assessment alongside your income tax and Class 4 National Insurance, and this calculator does not model them — not the plan types, not the thresholds, not the rates. If you are repaying, the amount the page says you are left with is higher than what you will actually keep. Check your plan and its threshold on gov.uk.

Does it account for pension contributions?

No, and there is no box for them. The income tax engine behind this page accepts a pension contribution and applies relief at source — the mechanism that extends your basic-rate band so a contribution shelters higher-rate income — but this page passes it nothing. So a self-employed person paying into a personal pension is shown more income tax here than they will owe. The pension tax relief calculator works out the band extension. Class 4 National Insurance is not reduced by pension contributions either way.

Why is my January tax bill bigger than the figure here?

Because of payments on account. The figure here is one tax year’s liability. Self assessment usually collects that as a balancing payment on 31 January plus two instalments towards the following year — each half of this year’s income tax and Class 4 bill — due on 31 January and 31 July. So a first January demand after a profitable year is commonly around one and a half times the annual figure. Payments on account do not cover capital gains tax or student loan repayments.

Do self-employed people in Scotland pay different National Insurance?

No. Income tax on self-employed profit is devolved and Scotland has six bands rather than three, so a Scottish trader’s income tax differs from an English, Welsh or Northern Irish one on the same profit. National Insurance is not devolved: the Class 4 rates and limits and the Class 2 small profits threshold are the same across the whole UK. Changing the region in this calculator moves the income tax figure and leaves the National Insurance untouched.

Why does my National Insurance rate fall above £50,270?

Because Class 4 has an upper profits limit, and profit above it is charged at 2.00% instead of 6.00%. It is the one rate in the UK system that goes down as you earn more, and it drops at almost exactly the profit where income tax steps up to the higher rate — so the combined marginal rate on your next pound jumps, even though the National Insurance part of it falls. A calculator that quotes a single Class 4 rate cannot show that, and overstates the bill for anyone above the limit.