Student loan repayment calculator for Plan 2

For the 2026/27 UK tax year, Plan 2 student loan repayments are 9% of gross income over £29,385, so a £35,000 salary repays £505 a year, about £42 a month.

By Mike, the developer behind ukmoneycalc. Every figure here is recomputed in code from the 2026/27 HMRC bands, not typed by hand, and re-checked each week against gov.uk. The stacked columns come from computing your take-home twice, one pound apart, so effects like the Personal Allowance taper show up instead of a flat headline rate.

What Plan 2 costs at each salary

Each row shows the Plan 2 deduction at that salary, then what your next pound loses in total, first without a loan and then with Plan 2 stacked on income tax and National Insurance. Values use the England, Wales and Northern Ireland bands. Shaded rows sit inside the Personal Allowance taper, where the stack peaks.

Computed from the 2026/27 income tax, National Insurance and student loan figures cited in Sources below, by recomputing take-home one pound higher at each salary.

Where the deduction quietly jumps

• The £100,000 taper is the peak. Past £100,000 of adjusted net income the Personal Allowance drops £1 for every £2 and reaches zero at £125,140. With Plan 2 on top, the next-pound stack peaks at 71p inside that band. gov.uk ↗
• The NI step-down hides the higher-rate step-up. At £50,270 employee NI falls from 8% to 2% just as the 40% band begins, so the stacked row barely moves there. HMRC ↗
• Child Benefit brings its own clawback. Parents claiming it meet the High Income Child Benefit Charge once adjusted net income passes £60,000, repaying 1% for every £200 over, all of it at £80,000 or more. The table leaves that charge out, so read those rows as a floor. gov.uk ↗
• Tax-Free Childcare ends at £100,000. Crossing £100,000 of expected adjusted net income also ends Tax-Free Childcare eligibility for the tax year, a cliff rather than a taper. gov.uk ↗

Thresholds for every plan

Thresholds uprate every April, and this one moved on 6 April 2026 from £28,470 to £29,385. If you have seen the older figure quoted elsewhere, that is why. A higher threshold leaves less of the same salary above it, so the deduction shrinks a little without your pay changing: on a £35,000 salary the move is worth about £83 a year. gov.uk ↗

Your balance doesn't set your repayment

The amount you owe has no impact on how much you repay each year; the deduction is a percentage of income over the threshold. Two borrowers on the same salary hand over the same amount each month even if one owes twice as much. So this tool never asks for your balance, and it does not model interest or the write-off date either, only the deduction from pay. gov.uk ↗

Salary sacrifice trims the repayment too

HMRC defines salary sacrifice as an agreement to reduce your entitlement to cash pay, usually in return for a non-cash benefit like a pension contribution. Your repayment income drops in step with the sacrificed pay. That trims the Plan 2 deduction alongside income tax and NI.

There's a catch. The same guidance warns that sacrifice can affect statutory pay, and can cost some employees their entitlement altogether, so the trade-off has more moving parts than the saving alone. Our salary sacrifice calculator shows the full per-pound saving with a Plan 2 loan in the mix. HMRC ↗

How the next-pound stack is measured

The engine computes take-home at your salary, then again one pound higher, and reports the difference. For 2026/27 the moving parts are the Personal Allowance of £12,570, income tax at 20% on taxable income to £37,700, then 40% to £125,140 and 45% above, employee NI at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above that, and Plan 2 at 9% over its threshold. HMRC ↗

Scottish income tax runs six bands instead, from a 19% starter rate to a 48% top rate, so picking Scotland in the calculator recomputes the stacked figure on those bands. The Plan 2 repayment itself is UK-wide and does not change. Wales and Northern Ireland use the same bands as England for 2026/27. gov.uk ↗

Where these numbers come from

Every number here comes out of a typed engine, not a spreadsheet or a hand-edited table. It runs on a dataset of verified 2026/27 UK tax constants, and each one carries a gov.uk or HMRC citation. A weekly job re-reads those source pages and flags anything that has moved.

I built the take-home engine from the literal 2026/27 bands, including the Personal Allowance taper that most calculator sites quietly skip. I tested it across the full salary range, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run separately. The build step fills every figure on this page from that engine, so no number was hand-typed into the prose. Assumptions and limits live on the methodology page.

Sources and disclaimers

1. Rates and thresholds for employers 2026/27 HMRC
2. Repaying your student loan, what you pay gov.uk, checked 28 July 2026
3. Income over £100,000 and the Personal Allowance taper gov.uk
4. Scottish income tax bands gov.uk
5. High Income Child Benefit Charge gov.uk
6. Tax-Free Childcare eligibility gov.uk
7. Salary sacrifice and the effects on PAYE HMRC