The UK or Ireland: where do you keep more?
On a salary, Ireland is no tax haven, and against the UK it is often the dearer of the two. With international wealth the picture can look completely different. Here we compare both systems where it really matters for a family moving over.
Why the comparison is hard
Anyone who puts two tax systems side by side rarely compares like with like. The UK deducts a tax-free Personal Allowance from income and then taxes the rest in bands. Ireland, in its PAYE system, taxes the gross salary in bands and then deducts tax credits from the tax, not from the income. Both end up somewhere similar for low earners, and very differently higher up.
On top of this, the charges alongside the tax are built quite differently in the two countries. In the UK, employee National Insurance falls to a low rate above a weekly threshold; in Ireland, USC and PRSI run on at their full rates. A comparison that shows only the tax therefore misleads at higher incomes, and a comparison that shows only the net figure hides where the difference comes from.
So we do it in two steps: first the two tariffs, then what runs alongside. And for every figure we say what it refers to. If you are looking for the full Irish framework rather than the comparison, from liability to tax to company taxes, you will find it in the Ireland profile of our Steueratlas (in German).
The two tariffs side by side
The Irish tariff has two rates, 20 and 40 per cent, with a single step at €44,000 for a single person. The UK tariff for 2026 to 2027 leaves the first £12,570 free, taxes the next band at 20 per cent and charges 40 per cent only above £50,270, about €60,146; above £100,000 the allowance melts away, and above £125,140 the rate is 45 per cent.
| Income | Ireland, after tax credits | UK income tax, England | Ireland: USC and PRSI on top | UK: employee National Insurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €40,000 (£33,432) | €4,000 | £4,172 (€4,992) | €2,413 | £1,668 (€1,996) |
| €60,000 (£50,148) | €11,200 | £7,516 (€8,993) | €3,853 | £3,006 (€3,597) |
| €100,000 (£83,580) | €27,200 | £20,864 (€24,963) | €8,231 | £3,682 (€4,405) |
Irish figures: own calculation from rates, bands and tax credits for a single employee, on gross pay, PRSI at the rate before 1 October 2026. UK figures: own calculation for an employee in England, Wales or Northern Ireland with the standard Personal Allowance, on the same income converted at the ECB rate of 2 November 2026 (€1 = £0.8358), National Insurance for a salary paid evenly by the month; euro amounts in brackets at the same rate. The table shows the shape of the two tariffs, not a full net comparison.
Source: HMRC on GOV.UK: “Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances” and “National Insurance: how much you pay”, tax year 2026 to 2027; Irish side: Revenue, “Tax rates, bands and reliefs” 2026, USC bands 2026 from the matching Budget 2026 summaries of KPMG Ireland and Grant Thornton Ireland, PRSI from SW14 (January 2026), gov.ie; euro amounts converted at the ECB reference rate of 2 November 2026. As of: UK figures checked 6 November 2026, Irish figures as verified on the German page.
The table shows one thing above all: on the pure tax line, Ireland is cheaper only at the lowest of the three points. From the middle onwards the UK keeps more of the salary out of income tax, because its higher rate starts so much later. Anyone who expects Ireland to be a tax haven for employees is looking at the wrong country.
What runs alongside the tax
In Ireland two further charges fall on the same salary: the Universal Social Charge at up to 8 per cent and social insurance, PRSI, at 4.2 per cent, from 1 October 2026 at 4.35 per cent. Both are open at the top. There is no ceiling above which they stop or fall.
In the UK the employee pays Class 1 National Insurance: according to GOV.UK 8 per cent on pay between £242 and £967 a week, and only 2 per cent on everything above. It does not stop either, but above that line it is a small charge, while the Irish ones carry on at full weight.
That gives the comparison its real shape. At €40,000 the three Irish charges together come to €6,413, the two British ones to about €6,987: Ireland is ahead. At €60,000 it is €15,053 against about €12,589, at €100,000 €35,431 against about €29,368. The higher the salary, the wider the gap in the UK’s favour.
Where Ireland is cheaper and where not
Three statements that follow from the above and that we consider sound.
First: on small salaries Ireland holds its own, because the tax credits work regardless of income and the first band is taxed at only 20 per cent.
Second: from middle incomes onwards the UK is cheaper for a single employee. Ireland’s step from 20 to 40 per cent comes at €44,000, the UK’s at about €60,146, and USC and PRSI keep running at full rates where National Insurance has dropped to 2 per cent. Anyone who will earn their whole income in Ireland should not count on paying less than in Britain.
Third: families with one earner fare better in Ireland than the single-person table suggests. A married couple with one income has a band of €53,000 in Ireland, €9,000 more than a single person, and the married person’s credit of €4,000 instead of €2,000. The UK has nothing like a married band: what moves between spouses is the Marriage Allowance, £1,260 of Personal Allowance, which reduces the partner’s tax by up to £252 a year.
And so to the sentence that really carries this page: the tax reason to move to Ireland does not lie in the tariff on earned income. It lies in the treatment of foreign income for people without an Irish domicile, and that is on the page Non-dom. The UK abolished its own remittance basis on 6 April 2025: according to HMRC’s helpsheet HS266, every UK resident is now taxed on worldwide income and gains as they arise, with relief only for new arrivals after ten years abroad, and only for four years. Anyone without foreign income will find no tax advantage in Ireland, but a different life.
What people earn in both countries
To put the rates in context, it helps to know what they fall on. Ireland’s statistics office, the CSO, measures average weekly earnings of €1,065 for the first quarter of 2026; the UK’s Office for National Statistics puts median weekly earnings of full-time employees at £811 in April 2026.
| Country | Measure | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Ireland | Average weekly earnings, first quarter of 2026 | €1,064.59 |
| Ireland | Average hourly earnings | €32.93 |
| United Kingdom | Median weekly earnings, full-time, April 2026 | £811.20 |
| United Kingdom | Median annual earnings, full-time, April 2026 | £40,911 |
The Irish figure is an average over all employees, part-time included, at 32.3 paid hours a week on average. The UK figures are medians for full-time employees, the annual one only for those in the same job for at least a year. Two statistics, two methods: neither is a direct like-for-like comparison.
Source: CSO, “Earnings and Labour Costs Q1 2026 (Final), Q2 2026 (Preliminary Estimates)”, published 25 August 2026; ONS, “Employee earnings in the UK: 2026”, released 22 October 2026 (provisional). As of: Irish figures checked 23 October 2026, UK figures 6 November 2026.
What an Irish salary leaves after the three charges is set out item by item on the page Income tax, USC and PRSI. What everyday life costs in the region is on the page Cost of living.
UK dividends: no trap at source
One point belongs on this page even though it is not part of the tariff comparison, because it concerns everyone who keeps British shares, and here the news for British readers is good.
Many countries withhold tax on dividends at source and give part of it back only on application, and under a treaty with a remittance clause that refund can be lost when the dividend is not brought into Ireland. The UK works differently. For a non-resident, HMRC’s helpsheet HS300 restricts the tax charge on investment income arising in the UK, dividends from UK companies and bank interest among it, to the amount of tax, if any, deducted at source. Income from UK property is the exception. Because that limit is a rule of UK law, there is no treaty refund to apply for and none to lose.
On the Irish side, Revenue’s manual on the remittance basis confirms that since 2008 it has applied to UK-source income as well. Whoever leaves the dividend outside Ireland keeps it outside Irish tax; whoever brings it in pays Irish tax on it. The convention itself, with its remittance clause in Article 6, is on the page The UK-Ireland double taxation convention; how the clause works in practice is on the page The remittance clause.
Scotland and Wales
This page compares Ireland with England, and the table says so, because a comparison is only worth as much as the tariff it refers to.
Wales sets its own rates, but for 2026 to 2027 they are the same as England’s, and dividends and savings are taxed there as in the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland follows the English table.
Scotland is different. On wages, pensions and most other income, Scottish taxpayers pay six rates from 19 to 48 per cent above £125,140, with a higher rate of 42 per cent that already applies well below the English threshold; on dividends and savings interest they pay the same as the rest of the UK. For a Scottish salary in the middle and upper range the gap to Ireland is therefore smaller than in our table. The Scottish bands are on GOV.UK; your own figures belong in the consultation.
More in Tax
The first step is a conversation
Whether Ireland is cheaper for your income depends on what it is made of. That is exactly what we work through.