UK high earners, 2026/27
Understand your RSUs. Plan your gains. Make better decisions.
From vesting tax to capital gains to a real sell-versus-hold decision, in one guided scenario. No sign-up, no advice, no spin.
What you’ll need, about 2 minutes
A worked example
See it before you enter anything
The inputs
- Base salary
- £95,000
- RSUs vesting
- 1,000 at £15 (£15,000)
Still to set aside for HMRC
£1,250
Effective rate on the vest: 55%
What it means
The vest pushes adjusted net income to £110,000, into the £100,000 to £125,140 zone where the personal allowance tapers and every extra pound is taxed at about 60%. The employer sells about £7,050 of shares to cover tax, but the real tax on the vest is £8,300. The £1,250 gap is what lands at self-assessment.
What this illustrates
- The £1,250 true-up is due at self-assessment; setting it aside before it arrives keeps options open.
- A pension contribution that brought income back below £100,000 would illustratively reclaim the lost personal allowance; this is the scale of that option at these numbers.
- If shares are held, the £15 vest price becomes the capital gains cost base for any future disposal.
Why you can trust the numbers
Every assumption is shown
Each result lists the exact rates and thresholds it used, so you can check the working.
No sign-up, nothing stored
Your figures stay in your browser. There is no account and no data to leak.
Built on published figures
HMRC and DfE rates for the 2026/27 tax year, with each value documented.
Honest about the limits
We say what is not modelled and link to guides that go deeper.
New to any of this? The Tax Playbooks and glossary explain every term in plain English. The Intelligence hub organises the guides by topic, from RSU taxation to threshold planning.