How much of a pay rise you keep after deductions.
Net gain from the rise
—
Net before
—
Net after
—
Kept of rise
—
Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| On the €5,000 rise | Amount |
|---|
The gap between the headline and the payslip
A pay rise never arrives in full. The number your employer quotes is gross, and PAYE, USC and PRSI all take a slice before it reaches your account. This tool answers the only question that really matters when you are weighing an offer or a counter: of the rise on paper, how much extra cash do I actually keep each year? It does that by calculating your full net pay before the rise, calculating it again after, and showing the difference. Because the rise sits on top of your existing salary, it is taxed at your marginal rate, which is usually higher than the average rate across your whole income.
Where your rise gets taxed hardest
The retention rate hinges entirely on where the rise lands relative to your standard rate cut-off of €44,000 for a single person. If you are already above that line, the rise is taxed at 40 percent income tax, plus your USC band and 4.1 percent PRSI, so you keep only around half. If the rise stays within the 20 percent band, you keep noticeably more. This is why two people with identical rises can keep very different amounts. The cruel irony is that the better paid you are, the smaller the proportion of any rise you take home, which is worth remembering when you negotiate.
Keeping €2,645 of a €5,000 rise
Take a single employee on €50,000, already past the cut-off, who is offered a €5,000 rise to €55,000. The whole rise falls in the higher-rate zone, so it is taxed hard.
So €2,645 of the €5,000 reaches your pocket, a retention of about 52.9 percent. Net pay rises from roughly €39,704 to €42,349. The chart splits the rise into what you keep and what goes in tax.
Salary sacrifice as the quiet workaround
Here is the expert move. If a large chunk of your rise is being taxed at 40 percent, you can divert some of it into a pension before it is taxed at all. Pension contributions get income tax relief at your marginal rate, so a euro that would have been taxed at 40 percent goes into your pension fund in full. You still pay USC and PRSI on it, but you escape the heaviest charge. The age-related limits cap how much of your earnings qualify for relief, rising from 15 percent in your twenties to 40 percent from age 60, on earnings up to €115,000. For a higher earner, redirecting part of a rise into a pension is often a far better use of money than taking it as cash and losing 40 percent. This tool shows the cash outcome; pairing it with a pension calculator shows the alternative.
Why does it feel like I barely notice my pay rise?
Two reasons. First, the marginal tax bite means a higher earner sees only about half of a rise as extra net pay. Second, the increase is spread thinly across twelve monthly payslips, so a €2,645 annual gain is only about €220 a month before you even adjust for any benefit changes. Modest rises genuinely can vanish into normal spending.
Could a pay rise ever leave me worse off?
From tax alone, no. Because only the income above the cut-off is taxed at 40 percent, you always keep something from a rise. The exception is means-tested supports such as certain medical card or childcare subsidy thresholds, where crossing an income limit can withdraw a benefit worth more than the net rise. That is a benefits cliff, not a tax effect, and it is worth checking if you are near such a threshold.