personal allowance
Personal Allowance is the slice of your income that HMRC lets you keep completely free of tax before any calculations begin on the rest.
In plain English
There is a particular kind of joy in the market when the woman selling pepper and tomatoes rounds down your bill and says, this one is free, just for you, my customer. You did not ask for it, you did not earn it through haggling, it simply sat there as a gift before the real transaction began. The Personal Allowance works on that same calm logic, except it is the UK tax system doing the rounding down, and the gift is written into law.
In the United Kingdom, every tax year, the government decides on an amount of income you can earn and keep entirely, with no tax taken from it at all. For the 2024 to 2025 tax year, that figure is £12,570. It does not matter if you are a Nigerian nurse working night shifts in Manchester, a software developer in London, or someone doing two jobs to send money home to Lagos every month end. That first £12,570 of your earnings is yours, untouched, before HMRC starts counting.
Think of your salary as a queue of money entering a hall with different rooms. The first room is free entry, no ticket required, and that room holds your Personal Allowance. Only after that room fills up does your income move into the rooms where tax rates start applying, first at basic rate, then higher, then additional, depending on how much you earn.
There is a twist worth knowing. If you earn above £100,000, the allowance starts shrinking, £1 lost for every £2 earned above that mark, until it disappears completely once you cross £125,140. So the gift is generous, but it is not for everyone forever.
Adaeze works in Leeds and earns £30,000 a year. Her first £12,570 comes to her tax free. Only the remaining £17,430 gets taxed, at the basic rate, which is far kinder to her take home pay than if the whole £30,000 had been taxed from the very first pound.
Questions people ask
Does everyone get the same Personal Allowance?
Most people on a standard tax code get the same amount each year, but it can change if you earn over £100,000, if you get certain benefits from your employer, or if you are eligible for specific allowances like Marriage Allowance, which can shift the figure up or down slightly.
Do I get a Personal Allowance if I am not a UK citizen but work there?
Yes, if you are a UK resident for tax purposes, your nationality does not matter. Many Nigerians working in the UK on visas still qualify for the full allowance, though it is worth checking your specific residence status if you split your time between countries.
What happens to the Personal Allowance if I have more than one job?
You only get one Personal Allowance in total, not one per job. HMRC usually applies it to your main job through your tax code, and your second job gets taxed from the very first pound, which often surprises people until they understand why.
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