You have received a payslip every month for years. You know your gross pay — the number you quote when someone asks what you earn. You know your net pay — the number that lands in your account. Everything in between is a column of deductions most people skim past without reading.
That is expensive ignorance. The lines between gross and net determine how much of your money you keep, whether your tax code is correct, whether your pension is working, and whether your employer is making contributions they are legally required to make. Here is what each line actually means.
Your total earnings before any deductions. If you are salaried, this is your annual salary divided by 12. If you work shifts, get bonuses, or receive any other taxable payments, they appear here too. Gross pay is the baseline — every calculation below starts from it.
This appears at the top of most payslips and is worth checking every single month. Your tax code tells your employer how much income to treat as tax-free before applying the standard rate. The most common code is 1257L — which represents the standard Personal Allowance of £12,570 per year. If your code is different, there is a reason: you may have untaxed income from another source, an outstanding tax debt, or a benefit in kind from your employer (a company car, private medical insurance) that reduces your allowance.
A wrong tax code costs you money silently. HMRC issues them. Your employer applies them. Neither will chase you to fix one that works in their favour. Check yours against your actual situation.
Pay As You Earn — the income tax deducted at source before you see a penny. In 2025/26, the basic rate is 20% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270. The higher rate is 40% on anything above that, up to £125,140. Additional rate is 45% above £125,140.
If your tax code is correct and your only income is your salary, PAYE should land you roughly right at year end. If you have other income — freelance work, rental income, investment gains — you will likely owe additional tax via self-assessment. PAYE does not know about that income. You have to account for it yourself.
Employee Class 1 National Insurance is currently 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270 per year, and 2% above that. It funds state benefits — the State Pension, Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay. You need 35 qualifying years of NI contributions to receive the full new State Pension. Your payslip is building that record every month. You can check your NI record and State Pension forecast at gov.uk — most people never do.
Your employer pays their own NI contribution on your salary — currently 13.8% on earnings above £9,100 per year. This does not come out of your gross pay. It is an additional cost your employer bears on top of your salary. It appears on some payslips for transparency; on others it does not. Either way, it is real money that affects how employers make hiring and pay decisions, even if it is invisible to you.
Under auto-enrolment, if you earn above £10,000 per year, your employer must enrol you in a workplace pension scheme. The statutory minimum is 8% of qualifying earnings total — at least 3% from your employer, at least 5% from you (which includes tax relief). Many employers contribute more. Some schemes use salary sacrifice, which reduces your gross pay for NI purposes and saves you and your employer NI contributions.
The numbers on your payslip matter. If your employer is not contributing the minimum they are required to by law, that is a breach of auto-enrolment regulations — and you can report it to The Pensions Regulator. Most people never notice because they never check.
If you have a student loan, repayments are collected through PAYE once your income passes the repayment threshold. Plan 1 (pre-2012 loans): 9% above £24,990. Plan 2 (post-2012): 9% above £27,295. Plan 5 (post-August 2023 starters): 9% above £25,000. Postgraduate loans: 6% above £21,000. These run simultaneously if you have both.
The repayment appears as a deduction on your payslip. It is worth knowing which plan you are on — because the thresholds, interest rates, and write-off periods differ significantly, and that affects how you should think about voluntary overpayments.
If your employer provides non-cash benefits — a company car, private health insurance, a gym membership — these are taxable. HMRC assigns them a monetary value and reduces your Personal Allowance accordingly, which is reflected in your tax code. The benefit itself may not appear explicitly on your payslip, but its effect does: a reduced tax-free allowance means more of your salary is taxed at the basic or higher rate.
What lands in your account after all deductions. This is the number most people treat as their income. It is the least informative number on the entire payslip.
Most payslips show cumulative totals for the tax year — total gross pay, total tax paid, total NI paid, total pension contributions. These are the numbers to check if you suspect something is wrong. If your year-to-date tax looks too high or too low compared to what your tax code and salary should produce, that is the signal to investigate. HMRC's Personal Tax Account (accessible at gov.uk) lets you cross-reference.
Read your payslip when it arrives. Not to obsess over it — to catch the things that are quietly wrong. Tax codes change mid-year. Pension contributions get missed. Deductions appear that should not be there. None of these things generate an alert. You will find them, or you will not find them. That is the choice.