Before you start

A National Insurance number
PAYE registration through your employer
A Government Gateway account, if you ever need Self Assessment
Records of any foreign income and overseas accounts

Step-by-step

1
Check the tax code on your first payslip
PAYE deducts tax at source, so a wrong code means wrong deductions for months before anyone notices. Give your employer any P45 from a previous UK job. Your code should not begin with an S — that is the Scottish prefix, and payroll run from a Scottish head office occasionally applies it in error.
Via employerWho: YouFirst payslip
2
Learn the three English bands
A personal allowance, then Basic, Higher from £50,270 and Additional from £125,140. Fewer bands than Scotland's six and a materially later Higher rate threshold. The thresholds have been frozen for several years, which pulls more people into higher bands each year as wages rise.
OnlineWho: You
3
Know about the 60% band above £100,000
The personal allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 earned above £100,000, producing an effective marginal rate near 60% between £100,000 and £125,140. Pension salary sacrifice is the standard response. It is the most consequential quirk in the English system and it is signposted nowhere.
OnlineWho: You
4
Check whether you actually need to file Self Assessment
Most employees do not — PAYE handles everything. You do if you are self-employed, have significant untaxed income, or meet certain income tests. The online deadline is 31 January following the tax year, which itself runs 6 April to 5 April.
OnlineWho: You
5
Budget the two Birmingham charges alongside income tax
Council Tax is a separate local charge on the occupier, running above £2,300 a year at Band D for 2026/27 after three years of steep rises. The Clean Air Zone is a further daily charge if you drive a non-compliant vehicle inside the Middleway. Neither appears in a take-home pay calculator, and together they are the difference between Birmingham feeling cheap and feeling merely cheaper.
OnlineWho: You
6
Work out your residence position in year one
The Statutory Residence Test determines UK tax residence by days present and connecting factors. If you have foreign income or assets, take advice in the first year — the UK replaced the old non-domiciled regime with a residence-based system and the transitional rules are genuinely complex.
In personWho: You

Documents you’ll need

National Insurance number
P60 — the annual summary from your employer
P45, if you change jobs during the tax year
Records of foreign income and overseas accounts
Government Gateway credentials, for Self Assessment

Things most newcomers don’t know

The 60% band between £100,000 and £125,140 is the largest hidden rate in the system.

The personal allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 above £100,000, so each extra pound in that range attracts the 40% headline rate plus the value of the allowance lost — around 60% in effect. A rise from £99,000 to £110,000 delivers far less than it looks like. Salary sacrifice into a pension is the standard remedy and is worth modelling before accepting an offer in that band.

Source: GOV.UK — Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances

Birmingham's real tax difference from other English cities is local, not national.

Income tax is identical in Birmingham, Bristol and Newcastle. What differs is Council Tax, and after a section 114 notice and rises of 9.99% then 7.5% then roughly 5%, Birmingham's is now materially higher than comparable cities. On a Band C flat that gap can exceed £300 a year, which is real money against a rent saving people move here for.

Source: Birmingham City Council — Council Tax

The tax year runs 6 April to 5 April, which catches everyone once.

Almost no other country uses these dates. It determines which year your arrival income falls into, when your P60 arrives, and when Self Assessment is due. Newcomers routinely compute against a calendar year and get their first filing wrong.

Source: HMRC

Frozen thresholds are a tax rise nobody voted for.

The personal allowance and the higher-rate threshold have been held flat for several years while wages rose, so each year more people cross into a higher band without any rate changing. The mechanism is called fiscal drag, and it is why your take-home percentage drifts down slightly each April even without a promotion.

Source: HMRC

Common mistakes to avoid

Not checking that your PAYE code is right, and in particular that it does not carry a Scottish S prefix.
Accepting a salary between £100,000 and £125,140 without modelling the 60% effective band.
Counting your tax year as January to December rather than 6 April to 5 April.
Comparing Birmingham's cost of living to another English city on rent alone, ignoring the higher Council Tax.
Ignoring National Insurance when estimating take-home pay.

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.