What is Take Home Pay: Deductions vs. Expenses

[ujjain]

I've applied for a few Linux DevOps/SysAdmin positions and I'm planning to start in 1 month. In trying to calculate my "Take home"-pay online I have a few questions:

£400 daily
Monthly Vale: £8666.67
Take Home: £6804.65 (75.41%)
Source: Contractor Calculator - Take Home Pay - Limited Company Calculators - Business Calculators

Is this Take Home Pay the amount that would end up the most positive situation on my personal current account after all taxes including corporate, dividend, income, PAYE/NI, etc.?

This makes me wonder where expenses/deductions come in here. Imagine you have £20k of expenses/deductions (travel, electronics, accountant) in a year, I assume that affects the amount of tax you pay. In this example there are no expenses/deductions?

I've been called a sockie, so I hope this topic contributes to contractoruk.com. If not, feel free to close it.

[TykeMerc]

I think you will find that assumes a level of expenses, 75% retention sounds too high without.

[stek]

Your 'take home pay' will be around £3200 a month (the most tax efficient amount), the rest goes on expenses and more importantly into the warchest if you've any sense.

Pay yourself any more and the tax due rises substantially....

[PerfectStorm]

Use this one, then you can specify expenses as well (so work out a daily sum required for travel, food and accomodation (if working away))

https://www.nixonwilliams.com/net_pay_calculator.asp

In my experience so far it's pretty much bang on, but remember that there is a personal tax on dividends after your combined income of salary and dividends goes over ~£41k. This will be paid, in my scenario, in January 2016 (i.e. more than a year away) so it's worth keeping a running total of that and having it tucked away. The calculator will reflect this too, but just so you know that it's not 100% yours as soon as it hits the business bank account or even the personal account after that!