What goes on a UK payslip
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Every UK employee must receive a payslip on or before their payday. It must show specific items set by law — and getting them wrong exposes you to HMRC penalties and employee disputes.
What the law requires you to include
The Employment Rights Act 1996 (reinforced by updates including the Employment Rights Act 2025) sets out the minimum information a payslip must contain:
- Gross pay — earnings before any deductions
- Net pay — the amount the employee actually receives
- Variable deductions — listed individually (for example, income tax and National Insurance)
- Fixed deductions — can be shown as a combined figure if you give the employee a separate standing statement explaining what makes it up
- The number of hours worked — required where pay varies by hours, such as hourly-paid or zero-hours workers
There is no prescribed format. Paper and digital payslips are both valid, provided the employee can access and keep their copy.
Gross pay: what to show
Gross pay is the starting point for everything else on the payslip. It should reflect all taxable earnings for the pay period, which may include:
- Basic salary or wages
- Overtime
- Bonuses and commission
- Statutory payments such as Statutory Sick Pay or statutory family-leave pay, where applicable
If an employee works variable hours, show the applicable hourly rate alongside the hours worked so they can verify the gross figure themselves.
Tax and National Insurance deductions
These are the two deductions that will appear on almost every payslip for an employee earning above the relevant thresholds.
Income tax is calculated on a cumulative basis across the tax year using the employee's tax code. The personal allowance is £12,570, meaning earnings up to that point attract no income tax. Above it, the basic rate is 20%, the higher rate 40%, and the additional rate 45%. Your payroll software handles the cumulative calculation — your job is to ensure each employee has a valid, up-to-date tax code from HMRC.
Employee National Insurance is deducted at 8% on earnings between the primary threshold and the upper earnings limit, then 2% on earnings above the upper limit. The payslip should show the total employee NIC deducted in that pay period.
Employer National Insurance at 13.8% is your cost, not the employee's. It does not appear on the payslip, but you need to account for it separately in your payroll records and pay it to HMRC alongside the employee contributions.
Pension contributions
If the employee is enrolled in your workplace pension scheme under auto-enrolment rules, both contributions should appear on the payslip:
- Employee contribution — minimum 5% of qualifying earnings, deducted from gross pay (or net pay depending on whether the scheme uses relief at source or net pay arrangement)
- Employer contribution — minimum 3% of qualifying earnings, shown for transparency even though it does not reduce the employee's pay
Showing both figures clearly helps employees understand the full value of their remuneration and reduces queries.
Other deductions and additions to consider
Depending on the employee's circumstances, additional lines may appear:
- Student loan repayments — deducted via payroll once HMRC issues a start notice; the plan type affects the repayment threshold, so always follow HMRC's instruction rather than asking the employee directly
- Attachment of earnings orders — court-mandated deductions you are legally obliged to apply
- Salary sacrifice arrangements — for example, cycle-to-work schemes or additional pension contributions; these reduce gross pay before tax and NI are calculated, so they must be handled correctly and reflected accurately
- Expenses and benefits — most are not paid through payroll but reported separately on a P11D by 6 July; if you payroll benefits instead, they will affect the gross taxable pay figure
Payroll reporting obligations that sit behind the payslip
Issuing the payslip is the employee-facing part of a wider compliance process. Under Real Time Information (RTI), you must submit a Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC on or before each payday — not after. This tells HMRC what you have paid and what has been deducted.
At year end, employees must receive a P60 by 31 May. This summarises total pay and deductions for the tax year just ended and cross-references what appeared on their payslips throughout the year.
If you run payroll software that is HMRC-recognised, most of these submissions happen automatically. The risk area is data quality: incorrect tax codes, missed starters or leavers, or wrong NI categories produce payslips that are technically issued but factually wrong — creating problems both for the employee and for your HMRC account.
Accurate payslips are the output of accurate payroll data. The two cannot be separated.
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