The UK Tax Calculator review

We review The UK Tax Calculator, the app that provides you with precise estimates of how much tax you should pay

Rating:

Verdict: The UK Tax Calculator is an essential piece of kit for anyone who wants to keep track of their taxes, what they owe, and how much they're being taxed each month. In short, this is both an informative and useful app that will no doubt become very popular, very soon.

Platform: iPhone and iPod Touch

Pros: Extremely easy to use, free updates ensure that its data is always up to date, and you'll always know how much tax you should be paying.

Cons: Looks wise, it's a bit ugly - but then, so are most tax men!

Version Reviewed: 1.2.2

Publisher: tapjunkie

Price: £0.59

More info: taojunkie website

Apparently, tax doesn’t have to be taxing... And sometimes it isn’t, so long as you’re Sean Connery and live in a tax exile with you’re millions safely tucked under your oligarch-sized mattress. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, this isn’t the case. On the whole, it’s pretty obvious that people tend to find tax complicated, annoying, and generally quite confusing.

Fortunately, you can now get some help with all that confusing number crunching thanks to the UK Tax Calculator application for the iPhone. The general idea behind this app is that it’ll give you estimates for your income tax, National Insurance contributions, Student Loan repayments, and pension contributions after you’ve entered some basic details about yourself.

Granted, this isn’t one of the most fun applications available on the App Store, but it’s certainly one of the most useful - particularly if you’re an entrepreneur or a freelancer. It is also extremely easy to use, taking less than a minute to get an estimated break down of your gross earnings on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Because this application utilises legacy tax data going back to 2004/2005, and is the only tax calculator on the market that includes the new 2009/2010 data, you can rest assured that the estimates you’re getting are usually bang on the money.

As we said, this product is very useful and extremely informative - we found that we had a much greater understanding of the UK tax system after only a few minutes using it.

Because it gives you the option to view a weekly, monthly, and yearly breakdown of your gross income it’s also a useful budgeting tool. Since testing, this has become an indispensable application on our iPhone as it’s perfect for tracking invoices, keeping records of what you owe - tax wise -, and making sure you pay those pesky student loan repayments.

Looks wise, the UK Tax Calculator application isn’t going to win any prizes. That said, it’s perfectly well presented, extremely user intuitive, and it allows you to add as many profiles as you like - so you can even do you friends tax estimates if the mood takes you.

Overall, this is a very useful application and one that we will certainly be implementing significantly into our working lives. Also, because you can actually see how much of, and where your money is actually going, it somehow lessens the blow - but only slightly...

This is a perfect application for anyone who wants to keep better track of their finances. Additionally, it is also a very educational and informative piece of kit, which means you’ll learn something about the UK tax system too - we certainly did!