# Check Take Home Pay: the full picture

Check Take Home Pay is a service of Sharp Studios Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15591412. Check Take Home Pay is not affiliated with HMRC or gov.uk. Figures follow HMRC’s published rules and test data; they are not tax advice.

## What it does

### Take-home pay

Send a salary and get back what someone takes home: income tax (Scottish and Welsh rates too), National Insurance, every student loan plan, pensions, salary sacrifice, bonuses and the High Income Child Benefit Charge, for every pay period of the year.

- `POST /v1/take-home`: Gross pay to take-home, every period
- `POST /v1/gross-from-net`: The salary for a take-home target
- `GET /v1/tax-codes/{code}`: What a tax code means (no key)

**Is take-home worked out per pay period or as a year divided by 12?** Per pay period, the way payroll does it, then added up. That is why a monthly year frees £12,579.12 on 1257L, not £12,570, and why a bonus month shows more tax and NI than the others.

**Does it handle Scotland and Wales?** Yes: Scotland’s six bands and Wales’s rates, from the region or from an S or C tax code.

### Employer cost

What a hire really costs over a year: pay, employer National Insurance less any Employment Allowance, Class 1A NI on benefits, the employer pension (the auto-enrolment minimum on qualifying earnings, or your own scheme) and the Apprenticeship Levy.

- `POST /v1/employer-cost`: Total cost of employment

**When does the Apprenticeship Levy apply?** To employers whose pay bill is over £3 million: 0.5% of each employee’s NI-able pay. Set apprenticeship_levy to include it.

### Payroll

One pay period exactly as payroll software runs it: tax on a cumulative or week 1/month 1 code, employee and employer NI by category letter (directors on the annual earnings period), student loans and the NI earnings bands for RTI.

- `POST /v1/payroll/period`: Tax, NI and student loans for a period
- `GET /v1/rates`: Every rate and threshold (no key)

**Can I use it instead of a payroll tax table?** Yes: it follows HMRC’s PAYE tax table routines and NI guidance for software developers, and passes HMRC’s own test cases.

### Statutory pay

Statutory Sick Pay from April 2026’s rules, maternity, adoption, paternity, shared parental, parental bereavement and neonatal care pay, statutory redundancy pay, notice, holiday entitlement (with 12.07% accrual for irregular hours) and minimum wage checks.

- `POST /v1/statutory/sick-pay`: One SSP payment
- `POST /v1/statutory/maternity-pay`: SMP week by week (and adoption, paternity, shared parental, bereavement, neonatal care)
- `POST /v1/redundancy-pay`: Statutory redundancy pay
- `POST /v1/notice-pay`: Statutory notice and its pay
- `POST /v1/holiday-entitlement`: Annual leave, or irregular hours accrual
- `POST /v1/minimum-wage-check`: Pay against the minimum wage

**Does SSP still have waiting days?** Not from 6 April 2026: it is paid from the first day off sick, at any earnings, at the lower of £123.25 a week and 80% of average weekly earnings.

### Contractors

Self Assessment for a sole trader, a director paid from their own company (corporation tax with marginal relief, dividend tax), an umbrella company’s pay from a day rate, and the same contract inside and outside IR35.

- `POST /v1/self-employed`: Income tax, Class 4 and student loans
- `POST /v1/director-pay`: Salary and dividends from your company
- `POST /v1/umbrella-pay`: Inside IR35 through an umbrella
- `POST /v1/ir35-compare`: Umbrella against limited company

**Which salary does director pay choose?** Give a salary, or leave it out and it tries the usual ones (none, the secondary threshold, the lower earnings limit, the primary threshold) as far as the profit can pay them, with the rest as dividends.

## Plans

- Free: £0 no card. 100 calculations a month; beyond that, stops until next month (402, with an upgrade link). Rate limit 5 a second.
- Pro: £14 a month. 5,000 calculations a month; beyond that, £4 per 1,000 more. Rate limit 20 a second.
- Scale: £49 a month. 50,000 calculations a month; beyond that, £2 per 1,000 more. Rate limit 50 a second.
- Enterprise: Custom invoiced. Your volume; beyond that, agreed with you. Rate limit Agreed, with an SLA.

## Accuracy

Every case in HMRC’s 2026/27 payroll test data passes, to the penny: https://checktakehomepay.co.uk/accuracy

## Using the API

Send `Authorization: Bearer <key>` to https://api.checktakehomepay.co.uk. The docs are at https://checktakehomepay.co.uk/docs and the OpenAPI document at https://api.checktakehomepay.co.uk/openapi.json. Errors are `{ "error": { "code", "message" } }`. Get a key: https://checktakehomepay.co.uk/contact