Money questions are where a calculator is most useful and most dangerous. Useful, because the arithmetic behind a payslip, a tax bill or an instalment plan is tedious and easy to get wrong by hand. Dangerous, because the answer depends on rules that differ from country to country and change every year, and a calculator that quietly uses last year's thresholds gives a confident, precise and wrong number. The tools in this section are built around that problem: every rate, band and allowance they use is written down with the year it applies to and a link to the official source it came from.
Rules are dated, not assumed
Income tax bands, national insurance thresholds, social insurance bases and standard deductions are kept in one place per country and per year, rather than being scattered through the code. Each tool page says which tax year or policy year it follows and when the figures were last checked against the official publication. When a new year's figures are published, they are added alongside the old ones, so an answer for a past year stays reproducible. If a figure could not be confirmed from a primary source — a government, tax authority or central bank publication — it is left out rather than guessed.
Nominal and real rates
Borrowing costs are often advertised in ways that make them look smaller than they are. A monthly fee of 0.6% on the original balance of an instalment plan sounds like 7.2% a year, but because you repay the balance month by month while the fee stays the same, the real annual rate is roughly twice that. The same trap appears in "flat rate" car loans and in comparisons between a monthly and an annual figure. The calculators here convert every offer into the same measure — the annual percentage rate implied by the actual cash flows, and the effective annual rate once compounding is included — so that offers can be compared fairly.
Estimates, not advice
A calculator can apply published rules precisely, but it cannot know everything about your situation: other income, reliefs you qualify for, local surcharges, or rules for particular professions. The results are estimates for planning — how much a pay rise is worth after tax, what an instalment plan really costs, how much VAT is inside a price. For anything you will sign or file, check the figure with your employer, the tax authority or a qualified adviser. Each tool lists what it does not cover in its limits section.
Your figures stay on your device
Salary, tax and debt figures are among the most private numbers people have. Like every tool on this site, these calculators run entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent to a server, logged or stored. You can check this in your browser's developer tools, or by switching off your connection after the page has loaded.
Which tool for which job
- UK take-home pay: salary after Income Tax (including Scottish rates), National Insurance, student loan and pension for the current tax year.
- US paycheck calculator: take-home per paycheck after federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and a traditional 401(k).
- China income tax and China take-home pay: cumulative withholding, special deductions, the annual bonus choice, and social insurance and housing fund with city contribution limits.
- True APR calculator: turn a monthly fee, a flat rate or a fixed payment into the real annual rate and total cost of borrowing.
- VAT & GST calculator: add tax to a price or take it out of a tax-inclusive total, with official rates for 13 countries and regions.
- Tip calculator & bill splitter: work out a tip and split the bill to the exact cent or rounded up.