Public finances

A full-time worker on typical pay of £39,863 paid 19.2% of it in income tax and National Insurance in 2025-26

The share of pay taken by income tax and National Insurance, 1990-91 to 2025-26, for full-time workers on typical pay that year, half of it and twice it. Tax rules for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Per cent.

Latest figures

Findings

• A full-time worker on typical pay paid 19.2% of it in income tax and National Insurance in 2025-26, against 26.3% in 1990-91

Notes

• Typical pay is the middle (median) full-time salary: half of full-time employees earn more and half earn less. In 2025 it was £39,863 a year before tax, so half of it was £19,932 and twice it £79,726. The lines use each year's own typical pay, so they follow someone who kept the same place in the pay scale as pay rose.
• On typical pay in 2025-26, that is £5,459 of income tax and £2,182 of National Insurance. In 1990-91 it was £2,231 and £906 on pay of £11,929.
• Assumes a salary with the standard tax-free personal allowance. It leaves out pension contributions, student loans, other taxes such as VAT and council tax, and the National Insurance employers pay on top of salaries.
• Scotland has set its own income tax rates since 2017-18, so the figures there differ. National Insurance is the same across the UK.
• Typical pay comes from the ONS's annual survey of earnings in Great Britain, taken each April. National Insurance thresholds are set by the week and multiplied by 52 here. In 2022-23 and 2023-24, when National Insurance changed partway through the year, each rate counts for the months it applied.
• Before April 1999, once pay reached the level where National Insurance started, workers also paid 2% on the pay below that level. From 1992-93 to 2007-08 a lower rate of income tax (20%, then 10% from 1999-00) applied to the first slice of taxable pay.

Sources

• HM Revenue & Customs, Tax structure and parameters statistics, Tables A.1, A.2, A.4 and A.4A
• Office for National Statistics, Earnings time series of median gross weekly earnings (NES and ASHE)

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