Skip to content
The Crossbencher

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
  • Slide to any salary - the slices recalculate instantly.
  • Income tax and National Insurance follow gov.uk's own worked examples, to the pound.
  • The employer's National Insurance line is money spent employing you that you never see.
  • The VAT line is an identity, not an estimate: a sixth of every standard-rated pound.
  • Nothing personal is stored - the sums happen on your device.
£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
Share on X

← All the games · Then watch what is left shrink →

Keep the record running

The record stays free. If it was worth your time, buy us a coffee - or become a member for the commentary and the weekly.

Buy us a coffeeBecome a member
The daily edition

The day, with the receipts attached.

One email each morning: today’s quiz, the Bench question, the argument and what broke - every figure with its source. Free, and it saves your streak. Stop it any time from one link at the bottom of it.

No password, no confirmation hoop - the stop link is in every issue. Just want the weekly editorial? →