Gross Pay vs Net Pay: What the Numbers on Your Payslip Actually Mean

You accepted the job at $50,000 a year. Or maybe £30,000. You did the quick maths on the walk home, divided by twelve, and landed on a number: around $4,170 a month, or roughly £2,500. That was the figure you budgeted your new flat around.

Then the first pay landed. And it was not that number. It was closer to $3,300. Or £2,000. Several hundred gone before you ever saw it.

Nobody warns you about this properly. You spend years being told what salaries mean, you negotiate hard over the headline figure, and then the money that actually arrives is a stranger you were never introduced to. The gap between the two has a name, and once you understand it, your payslip stops being a wall of cryptic abbreviations and starts being a map of where your money goes before it is even yours to spend.

That gap is the difference between gross pay and net pay.

This guide walks through every line on a payslip, from a US pay stub to a UK payslip to a European one. You will see what each deduction is, why it exists, who decided it, and which ones you actually chose without realising. There are worked examples with real 2026 numbers for the US, UK and Europe, so you can see exactly where a salary turns into a smaller deposit. And there is a section on what to do when a number looks wrong, because sometimes it is.

What Is Gross Pay?

Gross pay is the total amount your employer agrees to pay you before anything is taken out. It is the headline number from your job offer, the figure written into your contract, the salary you tell people when they ask what you earn. If your offer says $60,000 a year, your gross monthly pay is $5,000. If it says £30,000, your gross monthly pay is £2,500. Gross pay is what you earn on paper. It is almost never what arrives in your bank account.

Gross pay is built from whatever your employer owes you for the period. For a salaried employee that is usually your annual salary divided by the number of pay periods, twelve if you are paid monthly, fifty-two if you are paid weekly. For an hourly worker it is your rate multiplied by the hours you worked, plus any overtime at the higher rate. Gross also includes the extras: bonuses, commission, holiday pay, tips that run through payroll, shift premiums, and the cash value of some benefits. If your employer pays you for it and it shows up before deductions, it is part of gross. Two wrinkles catch first-timers. If you start partway through a month, your first gross is usually pro-rated, only the days you actually worked, so it looks smaller than a full month and then jumps the following period. And a bonus or commission month inflates your gross, which feels great until the deductions land, because that extra pay is taxed at your marginal rate and, in the UK, hit with National Insurance worked out on that single inflated period. The headline gross on a bonus month is real, but the take-home does not rise by the full amount. None of this means your pay is wrong. It means gross is a moving figure built from several parts, not one fixed number stamped on your contract.

The three ways gross pay gets quoted trip people up, because the same salary looks like very different numbers depending on the unit it is wrapped in.

Those hourly figures assume a full-time week, around 40 hours in the US and 37.5 in the UK. Part-time or different contracted hours change them.

This matters more than it sounds. A job advertised at £15 an hour and one advertised at £29,000 a year are roughly the same money, but they feel different, and they hit your account on different rhythms. Monthly pay is steadier and easier to budget. Weekly or fortnightly pay arrives faster, and tempts you to treat each packet as spending money. Knowing your gross figure in every unit lets you compare offers properly and spot when an hourly framing is hiding a thin annual total. Which of the two actually leaves you better off depends on more than the headline rate, something we unpack in our guide to salary versus hourly pay.

One more thing about gross pay. It is the number almost every other financial decision keys off. Your mortgage affordability, your pension contribution percentage, your student loan repayments, the tax band you fall into: all of them start from gross, not from what lands in your account. That is why the headline figure still matters even though you never receive it in full.

What Is Net Pay?

Net pay, also called take-home pay, is what actually arrives in your bank account after every deduction has come out of your gross. It is gross pay minus income tax, minus social security or National Insurance, minus pension contributions, minus anything else your employer is required or has agreed to deduct. Net pay is the only number that matters for your budget, because it is the only money you can actually spend or save.

If gross pay is the promise, net pay is the delivery. The journey between them runs through a stack of deductions, some compulsory and some you opted into, and the order they come off in varies by country. By the time you reach the bottom line, a meaningful slice of your salary has been redirected before you ever had a chance to touch it.

Here is the part that surprises people most. A chunk of what gets deducted is not lost at all. Your pension contribution, your 401(k), your health savings account: that money is still yours, just moved somewhere you cannot spend it casually. Net pay, in other words, understates what you actually keep. What leaves for tax and National Insurance is genuinely gone, traded for public services rather than returned as cash. What leaves for your pension is not gone at all; it is sitting in an account with your name on it. Hold onto that distinction, because it changes how you should feel about the size of the gap.

Net pay also moves around. Even on a fixed salary, your take-home can wobble from month to month because of overtime, a bonus briefly pushing you into a higher tax band, a benefit starting or stopping, or a student loan that has just crossed its repayment threshold. The gross can sit rock steady while the net drifts. More on that later, in the section on payslip surprises. Part of the wobble is structural. In the UK, income tax under PAYE is cumulative, worked out across the whole year so far, so it quietly smooths itself out: overpay one month and you tend to get it back the next. National Insurance is the opposite, calculated on each pay period on its own and never reconciled, so a bonus month carries an NI hit that is gone for good. Benefits in kind add another layer. A company car, private medical cover or other perks are taxed, often by shrinking your tax-free allowance through an adjusted tax code, so two people on the same salary can take home different amounts purely because one has a perk the other does not.

The Difference Between Gross and Net Pay, Simplified

The difference between gross and net pay is deductions. Gross pay is your total salary before anything is taken out. Net pay is what is left after income tax, social security contributions (National Insurance in the UK, FICA in the US), pension contributions, and any other deductions. Gross is what you earn on paper. Net is what you can actually spend.

The flow is the same everywhere, even when the labels change. You start at the top with gross and work down through the deductions until you reach the deposit:

• Start with gross pay, your full salary for the period.
• Subtract income tax (PAYE in the UK, federal and often state withholding in the US).
• Subtract social security (National Insurance in the UK; Social Security and Medicare in the US).
• Subtract pension or retirement contributions (auto-enrolment in the UK, a 401(k) in the US).
• Subtract anything else (a student loan, health insurance, union dues, salary sacrifice).
• What remains is your net pay, the deposit that actually reaches your account.

Abstract flows are easy to nod along to and hard to feel. Here is what the journey looks like for two real salaries, a single person on $60,000 in the US and on £35,000 in the UK, using 2026 rates.

These are illustrative figures for one person with no other income. The exact numbers shift with your tax code, your filing status, the state you live in, and what you have opted into. The shape, though, holds: you keep most of your salary, and a fairly predictable fraction goes before you see it.

Look at the bottom row. The American on $60,000 keeps about 73% of gross as a bank deposit; the Briton on £35,000 keeps about 76%. And remember the earlier point: part of that missing quarter is not missing. The 401(k) and the workplace pension are the worker's own retirement savings, held in their name. Count those as money kept rather than money lost and the real retention climbs higher again, closer to 78% in the US example and 80% in the UK one.

Two things are worth stating plainly. First, this is normal. A take-home rate in the low-to-mid seventies is roughly what most employees on these salaries should expect, and there is nothing wrong with your payslip if yours looks similar. Second, the figure is not fixed once you cross a border.

Continental Europe is where it shifts most. A German or French employee on an equivalent salary often takes home closer to 55% to 65% of gross, because social contributions there run much higher. That sounds worse than it is, for reasons the European section gets into. For now, hold the rough headline: in the UK and US, expect to keep somewhere around 70% to 78% of your gross; across much of the EU, expect 55% to 67%.

Every Deduction Explained: United States

A US pay stub stacks its deductions in a fairly consistent order. Here is every line you are likely to see, working down from the top.

Federal income tax. This is withheld from every paycheck based on the W-4 form you filled in when you started, and can update any time. The W-4 tells your employer your filing status and adjustments, and they use IRS tables to estimate what you will owe across the year, then take a slice each pay period. The US runs a marginal system with seven brackets for 2026: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%. A common misunderstanding is that landing in the 22% bracket means 22% of your whole salary goes to federal tax. It does not. Only the dollars inside each band are taxed at that band's rate, so your effective rate, the share of your total income that actually goes to tax, stays lower than your top bracket. On $60,000, after the 2026 standard deduction of $16,100 and a pre-tax retirement contribution, a single filer's federal tax works out at around $360 a month.

State income tax. This is where two people on identical salaries can take home very different amounts. Nine states, among them Texas, Florida, Washington and Nevada, levy no state income tax at all, so the line is simply absent from the stub. Others run their own brackets, topping out above 13% in California for high earners. For a middle income, state tax usually lands somewhere between zero and a couple of hundred dollars a month. It is the single biggest geographic swing in American take-home pay, and a genuine factor in where remote workers choose to live. It can go a layer deeper still. Some cities and counties levy their own local income tax on top of the state's, so a worker in New York City or parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania sees a line their colleague two towns over does not. And if you live in one state but work in another, reciprocity agreements between neighbouring states decide which one taxes you, a detail that trips up commuters who suddenly owe tax in two places, or in neither. The practical takeaway is simple: when you weigh a job offer in one state against an offer in another, compare the take-home, not the gross. The same salary can mean a noticeably different deposit depending only on the postcode you work from.

Social Security (OASDI). A flat 6.2% of your earnings, up to an annual wage cap of $184,500 for 2026. Your employer quietly pays a matching 6.2% on top, which never shows on your stub but is part of the real cost of employing you. Social Security funds retirement, disability and survivor benefits, and the cap means earnings above $184,500 are not charged for it, which is why the highest earners pay a smaller share of their total income into the system.

Medicare. A flat 1.45% of all your earnings, with no cap, again matched by your employer. Earn above $200,000 as a single filer and an extra 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax applies to the income above that line. Medicare funds healthcare for people aged 65 and over. Together, Social Security and Medicare are known as FICA, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, and combined they take 7.65% of most paychecks before income tax is even in the picture.

401(k) or retirement contributions. This one is different, because you chose it. When you enrol in your employer's 401(k), you pick a percentage of pay to divert into retirement savings, and many employers now enrol you automatically unless you opt out. A traditional 401(k) contribution comes out before income tax, lowering your taxable income now; a Roth 401(k) comes out after tax, so it does not cut today's bill but grows tax-free for later. Either way, this is not the government taking your money. It is you paying your future self, often with an employer match on top that is about as close to free money as personal finance gets.

Health insurance premium. Your share of an employer-sponsored health plan, and frequently the largest voluntary line on an American pay stub. It usually comes out pre-tax, which lowers your income tax and, for the health portion, your FICA base too. The amount depends on your plan and whether you cover dependants, but a few hundred dollars a month for an individual is common. The figure on your stub is only your slice. Employers typically pay the larger share of the premium, often two-thirds or more, and that part never appears on your pay stub even though it is real compensation, much like the employer pension contribution in the UK. Your choice of plan changes the number: a high-deductible plan paired with an HSA usually means a smaller premium but more to pay out of pocket when you actually need care, while a richer plan costs more each month and less at the point of use. And the cover is tied to the job. Leave it, and the plan (along with the group pricing) goes with it, which is why a gap between jobs is one of the few times Americans meet the full, unsubsidised cost of health insurance.

HSA or FSA. If your plan qualifies, you can route pre-tax money into a Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Account to cover medical costs. An HSA is yours to keep and invest; an FSA is mostly use-it-or-lose-it within the year. Both trim your taxable income, and both are optional.

Everything else. Below the big lines you might find union dues, premiums for employer-provided life or disability cover, and, in some cases, wage garnishments for things like child support or unpaid debts, which are court-ordered rather than optional.

Every Deduction Explained: United Kingdom

A UK payslip is usually tidier than a US pay stub, with fewer lines, but each one earns its place. Here is what you will find.

Income tax (PAYE). PAYE stands for Pay As You Earn, and it means your employer works out and deducts your income tax before you are paid, then sends it straight to HMRC. How much comes off depends on your tax code, a short string like 1257L that tells your employer how much you can earn tax-free. For 2026/27 the personal allowance is £12,570, frozen at that level since 2021 and set to stay there until at least 2030. You pay nothing on the first £12,570, then 20% (the basic rate) up to £50,270, 40% (the higher rate) above that, and 45% above £125,140. Most people in their first job pay 20% on everything over the personal allowance and never touch the higher bands.

National Insurance (Class 1). This is the one almost nobody expects, and the one that quietly shrinks a first payslip. As an employee you pay Class 1 National Insurance at 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270 a year, then 2% on anything above that. NI funds the state pension, the NHS and various benefits, and unlike income tax it is worked out on each pay period on its own rather than cumulatively, which is why a one-off bonus can take a surprisingly large NI bite. Your employer also pays a separate, larger employer's National Insurance on your wages, which you never see on the payslip. There is a quirk worth knowing. Because the 8% rate only applies between the two thresholds, your NI as a share of total pay is highest in the middle of the range and tapers once you pass £50,270, where the rate drops to 2%. That is the opposite shape to income tax, which climbs as you earn more. NI also rewards salary sacrifice more than income tax does: money you sacrifice into a pension before NI is worked out escapes the charge entirely, which is part of why pension salary sacrifice is such an efficient way to save. The deduction nobody expects turns out to be the one with the most levers attached.

Student loan repayment. If you went to university in the UK and took out a loan, repayments come out automatically through PAYE once you earn above your plan's threshold, and you do not get a say in it. You repay 9% of everything you earn above the threshold (6% for postgraduate loans), and the threshold depends on when and where you studied. For 2026/27 the repayment thresholds are £26,900 for Plan 1, £29,385 for Plan 2, £33,795 for Plan 4 in Scotland, £25,000 for Plan 5, and £21,000 for postgraduate loans. These are repayment triggers, not the size of your debt: you pay a percentage of income above the line, whatever balance is still outstanding.

Workplace pension (auto-enrolment). Since 2012, employers have had to enrol eligible workers into a pension automatically and contribute on their behalf. The minimum total contribution is 8% of your qualifying earnings (the slice between £6,240 and £50,270 for 2026/27), made up of at least 3% from your employer and the rest, usually 5%, from you. You can opt out, but think hard first, because opting out throws away the employer's 3% entirely. That is a pay rise you are declining. And here is the detail most payslips hide: the figure shown as your pension deduction is only your share. Your employer's contribution is paid on top and often does not appear on the payslip at all, so your real pension saving is larger than the line suggests.

Salary sacrifice and other deductions. Some benefits run through salary sacrifice, where you give up a slice of gross pay in exchange for something and, because the sacrifice happens before tax and National Insurance, you pay less of both. Cycle-to-work schemes, electric car leases, extra pension contributions and the older childcare voucher scheme are common examples. You might also see deductions for union membership, payroll-giving charity donations, or repaying a season ticket loan.

Every Deduction Explained: Europe

Cross the Channel and the labels change, but the structure is the one you now know: gross pay, minus income tax, minus social contributions, minus pension, equals net. What changes is the size of the slice. Social contributions across much of continental Europe are considerably higher than in the UK or US, and the trade-off is that they fund things Americans in particular often pay for separately.

Take Germany as the worked case. An employee there pays into four social insurance funds at once: pension (Rentenversicherung), health (Krankenversicherung), long-term care (Pflegeversicherung) and unemployment (Arbeitslosenversicherung). The employee's combined share is roughly 20% of gross for 2026, and the employer pays a near-matching amount on top. Add Lohnsteuer, the income tax, and a typical German worker keeps somewhere in the high fifties to low sixties of gross as a percentage.

That looks brutal next to an American keeping 73%. But the German employee's contributions have already bought statutory health insurance, a state pension, long-term care cover and unemployment insurance. The American keeping 73% still has to pay a health insurance premium out of what is left, the one you saw on the pay stub a moment ago, and build a retirement pot on top of a thinner state benefit. Comparing take-home percentages across borders without checking what those contributions fund is like comparing two grocery bills without looking in the bags. A lower take-home percentage can still leave you better covered. There is a second hidden layer. In most of Europe the employer also pays large social contributions on top of your salary, often another fifth or more of your gross, which never touches your payslip but forms part of the true cost of employing you. So the gap between what your employer spends and what you take home is wider than the deductions on your own slip suggest, on both sides of the Atlantic. That money is not waste. It buys sick pay, parental leave, unemployment cover and a pension that, in much of Europe, you would otherwise have to fund and insure for yourself. Cheaper take-home and more personal risk, or a smaller deposit and more shared protection: that is the real trade behind the percentages.

France works on the same logic. Income tax has been withheld at source since 2019 through the prélèvement à la source system, so French payslips now resemble British ones in that respect, and on top of income tax sit the cotisations sociales, the employee share of which runs to around 22% of gross (including the CSG and CRDS social levies). The Netherlands folds national insurance into its income tax: the first Box 1 band is taxed at 35.75% for 2026, rising to 37.56% and then 49.5%, with that first-band rate already carrying the social security premiums inside it.

One caveat for the whole region. European tax and social contribution rates change often, vary by income level, marital status, region and the specific funds you pay into, and several of the figures here moved for 2026. Treat them as representative rather than exact, and check your own country's authority for the number that applies to you.

How to Read Your Payslip or Pay Stub

Once you know what the deductions are, the document itself stops being intimidating. Most payslips and pay stubs organise the same information in the same rough order, whichever side of the Atlantic you are on. Find these sections and you can read any of them.

On a US pay stub, look for:

• Employee and employer details, plus the pay period the stub covers.
• Earnings: your regular pay, plus any overtime, bonus or commission, often shown as a rate and hours.
• Pre-tax deductions: 401(k), health insurance, HSA or FSA, taken out before tax is worked out.
• Taxes: federal income tax, state income tax if your state has one, Social Security and Medicare.
• Post-tax deductions: anything taken after tax, such as a Roth 401(k) or union dues.
• Net pay: the figure that actually reaches your account.
• Year-to-date (YTD) totals: running totals for the year, which matter at tax time.

On a UK payslip, look for:

• Your details, your National Insurance number, and your tax code (check this one first).
• The pay period and your gross pay for it.
• Income tax deducted under PAYE.
• National Insurance deducted.
• Your pension contribution.
• Student loan repayment, if you have one.
• Any other deductions, such as salary sacrifice or a season ticket loan.
• Net pay, usually alongside the cumulative totals for the tax year so far.

A habit worth building, especially in your first six months at any job: actually read the payslip each time, at least for that first half a year. Not because payroll is usually wrong, but because when it is wrong, you are the one person guaranteed to notice. Check that your tax code looks right, that your pension percentage matches what you agreed, that a student loan has not started deducting before you crossed the threshold, and that your gross matches your contract. The errors tend to be boring and fixable. The expensive part is not catching them for a year.

Common First-Payslip Surprises, and What to Do

Most first-payslip panic comes down to a handful of recurring surprises. Here are the ones that send people to a search engine, and what each usually means.

The emergency tax code one catches almost everyone in their first UK job. If your employer does not have your full tax details when they run that first payroll, HMRC tells them to apply a temporary code that often taxes you more heavily, sometimes as though you have no personal allowance at all. It usually sorts itself out once your records catch up, and any overpayment comes back through later payslips or after the tax year ends. If it drags on past a month or two, a quick call to HMRC or a look at your online tax account fixes it faster than waiting.

The automatic pension deduction triggers the opposite reaction, a flash of irritation at money being taken without an obvious yes. Resist the urge to opt out on reflex. In the UK that 5% of yours unlocks at least 3% from your employer; in the US a typical match might add fifty cents for every dollar up to a limit. Opting out to see a slightly bigger number this month means handing back a guaranteed return that no investment can reliably match.

How to Increase Your Net Pay, Legally

Some of the gap between gross and net is fixed by law. Some of it is not, and there are legitimate ways to keep more of your salary without doing anything HMRC or the IRS would object to.

If you are in the UK. Salary sacrifice is the most powerful lever. Because you give up gross pay before tax and National Insurance are worked out, sacrificing into your pension, a cycle-to-work scheme or an electric car lease cuts both, so the hit to your take-home is smaller than the amount you save or spend. Check your tax code is correct, since a wrong one is the most common reason people overpay. And if you are married or in a civil partnership and one of you earns below the personal allowance, the Marriage Allowance lets the lower earner transfer some of their unused allowance to the other, worth a little over £250 a year.

If you are in the US. Start with your W-4. If you get a large tax refund every spring, that is not a windfall, it is the IRS returning money it should never have held, interest-free, for a year. Adjusting your W-4 so less is withheld puts that money in your paycheck now instead. Maximising pre-tax contributions to a traditional 401(k) and an HSA lowers your taxable income today. And because state income tax varies so much, where you live is itself a lever, though moving states purely to save tax is a drastic step most people will never take for that reason alone.

Across the EU. Many countries allow deductions that quietly lift net pay: tax-deductible commuting costs, home-office allowances, and recognised professional expenses are common. The specifics differ sharply from one country to the next, so the move here is to find out what your own tax authority lets you claim rather than assuming the rules match a neighbour's.

Everywhere. One piece of restraint worth keeping in mind. Contributing to a pension or 401(k) up to the employer match is almost always worth it, because the match is free money. Beyond the match the maths gets less obvious, and if you are in the lowest tax band a Roth-style contribution (taxed now, free later) can beat a pre-tax one. The right answer depends on your tax band today versus the one you expect in retirement, which is a genuinely personal calculation rather than a universal rule.

From Gross Salary to What's Left: Seeing the Whole Picture

Your payslip explains where your money goes before it reaches you. That is the first half of the story, the part that turns a gross salary into a net deposit. The second half is what happens after the money lands, and that is where most budgets quietly fall apart, because the deposit is the number people fixate on and then lose track of within days. If yours tends to vanish well before the next one arrives, that is its own problem with its own fixes, the subject of how to stop living paycheck to paycheck.

Knowing your net pay is the start. Watching where it actually goes is the part that changes anything. Once you have the take-home figure, the next question is how to divide it. A simple framework like the 50/30/20 rule splits take-home into needs, wants and savings; for a fuller system, there is our guide to managing your money without willpower.

This is where a tool like Endute fits. By connecting your bank accounts, you watch your net pay land and then track exactly how it is spent, category by category, across every account and currency you hold. Your payslip shows the deductions that happen before payday; Endute shows what happens to everything that survives them. Put the two together and you have the full journey, from the headline salary you negotiated to the money still in your account at the end of the month. You can see how it works on the features page.

The Number That Actually Matters

Gross pay is the headline. Net pay is the reality, and the distance between them is income tax, social security or National Insurance, pension contributions, and, in the US, the health insurance you arrange through work. Depending on where you live and what you have opted into, you will keep somewhere between roughly 55% and 78% of your gross, and a good slice of what comes off is your own retirement savings rather than money truly gone.

None of this is a mistake on your payslip. It is the system working as designed. The people who feel in control of their money are not the ones with the highest gross, they are the ones who understand their net, read their payslip without flinching, and know where every deduction goes. That understanding is the first real step. The rest is what you do with what lands.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is gross pay?

Gross pay is the total amount your employer pays you before any deductions. It is the salary figure on your contract or job offer. If you are offered £30,000 or $60,000 a year, that is your gross. It is not the amount that reaches your bank account, because tax, social security, pension and other deductions come out of it first.

What is the difference between gross and net pay?

The difference is deductions. Gross pay is your full salary before anything is taken out. Net pay, or take-home pay, is what remains after income tax, social security or National Insurance, pension contributions and any other deductions. Gross is what you earn on paper; net is what you can actually spend.

What is net pay?

Net pay is the money that actually lands in your account after all deductions. It is sometimes called take-home pay, and it is the only figure that matters when you build a budget, because it is the money you genuinely have to work with.

What percentage of my salary goes to tax?

It depends on your country, your income and what you opt into, but as a rough guide, employees in the UK and US on typical salaries keep around 70% to 78% of their gross as take-home, while across much of continental Europe it is closer to 55% to 67% because social contributions are higher. Some of what comes off, such as pension contributions, is your own savings rather than tax.

Why is my first paycheck less than expected?

Almost always because you were comparing it to your gross salary divided by twelve, rather than your net. The gap is the stack of deductions on your payslip. A first paycheck can also be lower than later ones if an emergency tax code (UK) or default withholding (US) is taking too much, which usually corrects itself or can be fixed by checking your tax code or W-4.

How do I read my payslip?

Find your gross pay for the period at the top, then the deductions below it: income tax, National Insurance or Social Security and Medicare, pension, and any student loan or other items. The figure left at the bottom is your net pay. Check that your tax code, pension rate and gross all match what you expect, especially in your first few months at a new job.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Tax rates and thresholds change from year to year. Verify current figures with HMRC in the UK, the IRS in the US, or your own country's tax authority before making decisions.

Related Guides

If you want to go deeper on any single line of your payslip, these guides pick up where this one leaves off.

• If you are weighing two job offers, salary versus hourly pay compares the two pay structures and when each one leaves you better off.
• UK tax codes explained decodes the letters and numbers that set how much income tax comes off your UK pay.
• Workplace pensions explained covers auto-enrolment, opting out, and the employer money most people leave on the table.
• For US employees, how to fill out a W-4 walks through the form behind your federal withholding.
• And higher-rate taxpayers should read pension tax relief, which shows how to claim the relief that is easy to miss.