The company take-home calculator
What a director actually takes home
Set the salary you take and the dividend you draw. You’ll see the total tax — split into income tax, National Insurance, dividend tax, and the corporation tax already paid inside the company — and exactly what reaches your pocket. Most owners have never seen all four in one place.
“Take it as dividends, it’s more efficient.” Half true — and the half left out is the expensive one. The dividend rate you hear quoted — now 10.75% and 35.75% from April 2026 — is only the last layer. Before a single pound can be declared as a dividend, the company has already paid corporation tax on the profit behind it. Set your two numbers and watch all four taxes assemble.
Most owners set this at £12,570 — the personal allowance.
You keep
£54,174
in your pocket
Total tax
£22,457
across all four taxes
Effective rate
29.3%
of the £76,631 profit it takes
Every tax on the way to your pocket
The dividend in your hand is the lastslice. Before it can be paid, the company has already settled corporation tax on the profit behind it — so the “35.75% dividend rate” is only the final layer of a taller stack.
Two taxes wearing one name
This is why the sector comparison looks the way it does: the owner isn’t dodging tax, they’re paying it in two places that never appear on the same statement. Corporation tax is charged on the company; dividend tax is charged on the person; and because both have risen while the personal allowance stayed frozen, the combined rate on drawn profit has quietly become one of the higher effective rates in the whole system.
None of that makes dividends the wrong choice — for most owners a low salary plus dividends still beats an all-salary draw, because it side-steps employee and employer National Insurance. But “still the best of the options” is a very different claim from “lightly taxed”, and only one of them is true.
How these figures are calculated
We take the salary and dividend you set and work out the four taxes on them. Corporation tax is charged on the profit needed to fund the dividend, at the 2026/27 rates — 19% under £50,000, 25% over £250,000, marginal relief between — computed with the same engine as the rest of Kept. Employer National Insurance (15% above £5,000) and employee National Insurance both fall on the salary; a sole director gets no Employment Allowance. Income tax applies to any salary above the personal allowance, and dividend tax uses the 2026/27rates of 10.75% / 35.75% / 39.35% after the £500 allowance, with the £100,000 taper applied. It assumes this is the owner’s only income and no pension contribution — a company pension would change the picture, which is exactly what the paid product models. The effective rate is measured against the company profit the whole draw requires.
This is the standard route. Kept finds the better one for your numbers.
A company pension, a partner on the dividend register, the right salary — the owner levers routinely move the effective rate by several points. Kept models them on your real profit and shows the after-tax difference over 20 years.
Model my extractionSources
- Corporation tax rates and marginal relief, 2026/27: GOV.UK.
- Dividend tax rates (+2 points from April 2026, Autumn Budget 2025): GOV.UK.
- Employer National Insurance and Employment Allowance, 2026/27: GOV.UK employer rates.