Project manager contractor on £80,000

Personal Ltd Co. Outside IR35. Age 34. Pension preference: modest.

Every figure on this page is computed at build time by the same engines that power the live salary–dividend split, take-home and SIPP optimiser calculators. Inputs come from a single CSV row; outputs come from the engines. No static lookup tables, no hand-coded numbers.

Net cash

£49,013

Pension

£16,000

Effective rate

18.7%

Marginal rate

33.8%

How much tax does a project manager contractor on £80,000 actually pay in 2026/27?

Short answer: £14,987 per year — an effective rate of 18.7% on gross company profit.

What's in that number? For a Ltd Co director the figure is the sum of five lines: corporation tax (£9,578), employer NI (£1,136), employee NI (£0), personal income tax (£0) and dividend tax (£4,273). The optimiser placed £12,570 of salary, £40,716 of dividend and £16,000 of employer pension contribution to produce that figure — the lowest total in the searched grid.

What's the marginal rate on the next £1? 33.8%. This is the number that matters for "is one more invoice worth the cost in lost benefits / extra effort?" decisions — it is always higher than the average effective rate.

How does this compare to PAYE employment at the same gross? The PAYE figure for a £80,000 salaried employee in 2026/27 is roughly £26,400 of combined income tax + employee NI. The structure-specific savings come from where the deductions sit, not whether they sit anywhere — see the contractor tax guide for the side-by-side maths.

The numbers, line by line

Optimum salary	£12,570
Optimum dividend	£40,716
Optimum pension	£16,000
Net cash (optimum)	£49,013
Net wealth (cash + pension)	£65,013
Rule-of-thumb net cash	£56,804
Rule-of-thumb net wealth	£56,804
Saving vs rule of thumb	£209
Effective rate on profit	18.7%
Marginal rate (next £1 dividend)	33.8%

Why this scenario is different

Compared to the closest peer profile — IT contractor at £80,000 — this scenario sits £0 higher on gross income. That moves net cash by +£0, the pension contribution by +£0, and the effective rate by +0%. The effective rate moves only modestly — both scenarios sit inside the same binding tax band. The optimiser shifts £0 of the extraction out of the dividend slice, and £0 out of pension contributions.

Questions this scenario raises

What is the Personal Allowance and how is it used in this calculation?

The Personal Allowance is the first £12,570 of non-savings, non-dividend income on which no income tax is charged. It is consumed from the bottom up: salary first, then dividends. Above £100,000 of adjusted net income the allowance tapers at £1 lost for every £2 of income, fully eroded at £125,140 — producing the well-known 60% effective marginal rate inside that £25,140-wide band.

Are the numbers on this page computed live or pre-rendered?

They are pre-rendered at build time by running the BracketMath engine code against the inputs for this specific row. That means: zero JavaScript on the page for the calculation itself, the figures cannot drift if the engine is changed, and you can verify them by running the corresponding calculator with the same inputs.

What tax year do these figures use?

2026/27 UK tax year (6 April 2026 – 5 April 2027), England, Wales and Northern Ireland rates. Scottish tax bands are not modelled in this calculation — Scotland has a separate Starter / Basic / Intermediate / Higher / Advanced / Top band schedule that will be added in a future batch.

Are the engine assumptions documented anywhere?

Yes — every constant lives in src/lib/tax/constants.ts with a source-URL comment. Every engine function is unit-tested against HMRC examples (180+ test cases). The full methodology is at /about and the per-engine assumptions are spelled out at the foot of each calculator.

Is the figure on this page net of accountancy fees?

Yes when relevant — the take-home calculator deducts an umbrella fee for inside-IR35 rows (£1,500/yr assumed) and the optimiser allows for an arbitrary annual business expense pot (£3,500/yr default for Ltd Co rows). Sole-trader rows assume the higher of £800/yr or 5% of turnover as actual business expenses, which approximates a low-overhead service business.

Methodology

Income tax, National Insurance and Corporation Tax bands taken from HMRC's 2026/27 rates and allowances tables (gov.uk/.../income-tax; corporation-tax). Pension Annual Allowance and taper rules from Finance Act 2004 / 2023. Trading allowance per ITTOIA 2005 s.783A. Voluntary Class 2 figure (£179.40/yr = £3.45/wk × 52) from HMRC voluntary NI guidance.

Style: 2026/27 tax year throughout; figures rounded to whole pounds in the user-facing prose; effective rates computed as (deductions / gross). The voice is methodological — no first person, no claimed credentials, no marketing fluff.

This page is not personalised advice; for advice regulated by the FCA, consult an adviser registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. See the full disclaimer.