Tax codes for the 2026/27 tax year

The tax year itself

The UK tax year runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. Every figure below applies to that period and to no other, and a code issued for one tax year does not carry into the next unless HMRC leaves it in place.

The standard code

The standard code for 2026/27 is 1257L. The number in it is the Personal Allowance of £12,570 with its final digit replaced by the letter — which is why multiplying the number by 10 gives back the tax-free amount the code grants.

Source: The allowance is stated in the Act itself, not merely published: Income Tax Act 2007 s.35(1). That is unusual on this site — most of the operative figures here are HMRC publication rather than statute.

A code with a smaller number than the standard one is not automatically wrong. It usually means something has been taken off your allowance — a benefit in kind, untaxed income, or tax owed from an earlier year. A code with a larger number usually means something has been added, most often a Marriage Allowance transfer.

The emergency codes

HMRC publishes these as the emergency codes for the year: 1257L W1, 1257L M1, 1257L X. The code itself is the standard one; what makes it an emergency code is the marker on the end, which puts it on the non-cumulative basis so that each payslip is taxed on its own. What that does to your pay is a longer story than the marker suggests.

The three rate scales

Which rates your code selects depends on its first letter, and the three scales do not have the same shape. This is the part a single UK-wide table gets wrong.

England and Northern Ireland — 3 bands: Basic rate 20%, Higher rate 40%, Additional rate 45%.

Scotland — 6 bands: Starter rate 19%, Basic rate 20%, Intermediate rate 21%, Higher rate 42%, Advanced rate 45%, Top rate 48%.

Wales — 3 bands: Welsh basic rate 20%, Welsh higher rate 40%, Welsh additional rate 45%.

Scotland having more bands than the rest of the UK is why it has more override codes, and why they do not correspond to the rest-of-UK ones — the code that charges everything at the intermediate rate has no rest-of-UK equivalent, because there is no intermediate rate to charge it at. The Scottish codes sets out which is which.

The Welsh rates come to the same figures as the rest of the UK this year, and that is a result rather than a rule. They are constructed by the Income Tax Act from the UK rates and a rate set by the Senedd, and the construction is what would make them differ.

What changed, and what this page will not tell you

This page states the figures for the tax year named at the top of it. It does not compare them with last year’s, because this site holds one year’s data and a comparison would mean stating a figure it has not sourced. If you need last year’s codes, HMRC keeps your own previous years in your Personal Tax Account.