Answers · UK 2025/26

Do I pay more tax if I have two jobs?

You do not pay a higher tax rate simply for having two jobs -- your combined income is still taxed at the normal rates for your total earnings. However, your second job is often taxed at 20% from the first pound (tax code BR) because your Personal Allowance is usually allocated entirely to your main job.

Last updated: 3 July 2026Last reviewed: 3 July 2026How we verify

Full answer

Having two jobs does not, in itself, mean you are taxed more heavily overall or at a higher rate than someone earning the same total income from a single job -- Income Tax is ultimately based on your total taxable income from all sources combined across the tax year, using exactly the same Personal Allowance and tax bands as anyone else. What can feel like paying 'more tax' on a second job is really a timing and allocation issue within the PAYE system rather than a genuinely higher overall tax bill: because each employer operates PAYE independently and does not automatically know about your other job, HMRC generally allocates your full Personal Allowance to what it identifies as your main job (usually the one with the higher pay, or whichever HMRC has been told is primary), and applies a Basic Rate ('BR') code to the second job, taxing all of its income at 20% from the very first pound, with no allowance applied there at all. If your combined income from both jobs would normally mean some of it should be tax-free under the Personal Allowance, or taxed at 20% rather than being pushed artificially into a higher rate, but the second job's flat BR treatment does not reflect this correctly, you may end up temporarily overpaying tax during the year, which is then reconciled and refunded once HMRC's year-end calculation (or your Self Assessment return, if applicable) accounts for your true combined position. You can proactively ask HMRC to split your Personal Allowance across both jobs in a more accurate proportion if you know in advance that your second job's earnings alone would otherwise leave part of your allowance unused.