UK 2026/27 annual allowances at a glance.
| Allowance | Amount | Tax saved at your rate |
|---|
Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Allowance | Amount | Tax saved at 45% |
|---|
One screen for the numbers that reset every April
Most people meet their tax allowances one at a time, usually when an accountant mentions one in March. This page pulls the headline 2026/27 figures into a single table so you can see the full picture at the start of the tax year, when there is still time to act. The personal allowance sits at £12,570, the ISA subscription limit at £20,000, the pension annual allowance at £60,000, and the capital gains tax annual exempt amount at just £3,000 after several years of cuts. You type your marginal rate, and the tool multiplies each allowance by that rate to show roughly what fully using it is worth to you in tax.
That second column matters more than people expect. An allowance is only as valuable as the tax it saves at your rate, and a 45 percent additional-rate taxpayer gets far more from the same headline number than a basic-rate taxpayer does. The tool is built for the planning-minded individual, the contractor balancing salary and dividends, and anyone doing a January Self Assessment who wants to know what they left on the table.
Use-it-or-lose-it versus carry-forward
The single most useful distinction here is which allowances die at midnight on 5 April and which do not. The ISA allowance is strictly use-it-or-lose-it: the £20,000 cannot be rolled into next year. The same is true of the CGT exempt amount and the dividend allowance. The pension annual allowance is the big exception. Under HMRC carry-forward rules you can mop up unused annual allowance from the previous three tax years, provided you were a member of a registered pension scheme in those years and you have the relevant earnings to support the contribution. That single rule lets a saver with spare cash put well over £60,000 into a pension in one year.
A common and costly mistake is assuming the personal allowance behaves like the others. It does not roll forward, and worse, it shrinks once income passes £100,000, falling by £1 for every £2 of income above that line until it disappears entirely at £125,140. That taper is what creates the notorious 60 percent effective band.
What the allowances are worth to a 45 percent taxpayer
Set the marginal rate to 45 percent and the value of each allowance jumps. The breakdown table directly below the calculator pulls three of the largest entries straight from the tool's own figures so you can see the tax saved.
The chart below ranks those same three allowances by the tax they shelter at 45 percent, which makes the pension allowance's dominance obvious.
Where Scotland changes the answer
The allowances in the table are UK-wide and apply in Scotland too, because the personal allowance, ISA limit, pension allowance, CGT, dividend and savings allowances are all set by Westminster, not Holyrood. What differs is the rate column. Scotland has its own income tax bands, and a higher-rate Scottish taxpayer faces a 42 percent marginal rate, with an advanced rate of 45 percent and a top rate of 48 percent above £125,140. So a Scottish saver should enter their actual Scottish marginal rate to see the true value of, say, pension relief, which can be slightly more generous than for an equivalent earner in England.
Does the marriage allowance affect my personal allowance?
Yes. The marriage allowance lets a non-taxpaying spouse transfer £1,260 of their personal allowance to a basic-rate partner, which is why it appears in the table. It is only worth doing where one partner earns below £12,570 and the other is a basic-rate taxpayer; a higher-rate recipient is not eligible. The benefit is around £252 of tax for the couple, and you can backdate a claim up to four tax years.
Can I split my £20,000 ISA across different ISA types?
You can. From April 2024 you may pay into more than one ISA of the same type in a tax year, and you can spread the single £20,000 limit across a cash ISA, a stocks and shares ISA, and an innovative finance ISA in any combination. The Lifetime ISA is the exception, capped at £4,000 within that overall £20,000, and the Junior ISA has its own separate £9,000 limit that does not touch the adult allowance.