The Crossbencher
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Your Money's Journey

Watch a salary get sliced

Set a salary and watch where it goes before and after it reaches you - including the slice your employer pays that never appears on a payslip. Every rate is the published one, linked below.

▸ How to play
£10k£150k

£35,000 a year

Income tax£4,486
National Insurance (yours)£1,793
Into your account£28,721

£6,279 left before it reached you - about £2,393 a month arrives. And your employer paid £4,501 in employer's National Insurance on top of your salary: money spent employing you that you never see on a payslip.

Then you go shopping

50%

If 50% of your take-home goes on standard-rated goods and services, £2,393 of it is VAT - a sixth of every standard-rated pound, by definition. (Most food, children's clothes and rent are zero-rated or exempt; fuel, alcohol and tobacco carry their own duties on top.)

Where your £6,279 went

Split by the Treasury's own method - the same allocation HMRC prints on every Annual Tax Summary.

Welfare
£1,337
Health
£1,312
State pensions
£747
National debt interest
£678
Education
£647
Defence
£345
Public order & safety
£276
Transport
£251
Business & industry
£220
Government administration
£126
Housing & utilities
£119
Environment
£94
Culture
£82
Overseas aid
£44
EU settlement payments
£6

Worth sitting with: the debt-interest line. Servicing past borrowing takes more of your money than educating the country's children - £678 of yours against £647. The Treasury's method, in full.

2026-27 published rates: income tax · National Insurance · England, Wales & NI bands; Scotland differs

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