UK Debt Calculator
What is your share of the UK national debt?
The national debt now stands at £3 trillion and rises by £7,010 every second. Divided across the population, some of it is yours. Change the figures below to see how much.
Your details
Gross, before tax. Used only in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Used to work out your share at state pension age.
Everyone counts — the debt is divided per head, not per taxpayer.
Your results
Rising by £— a day, every day, whatever you do. Your household of 2 carries £— between you.
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Income tax and National Insurance are calculated at England, Wales and Northern Ireland rates for 2026/27 (personal allowance £12,570, 20% to £50,270, 40% to £125,140, 45% above; employee NI 8% then 2%). Scottish rates differ. This is an illustration of scale, not a tax calculation or financial advice.How the UK debt calculator works
And what the numbers do and don't mean
How is my share of the national debt calculated?
Public sector net debt divided by the UK population — 68,350,000, the ONS mid-year estimate. That is the standard per-head measure, and it counts everybody: children, pensioners, people who have never paid a penny of income tax. The debt figure updates continuously from the last official ONS release. Full methodology here.
Do I actually owe this money?
No — and this is the honest caveat every debt calculator should carry. You have no personal liability for government debt. Nobody will send you a bill. It is a way of expressing the scale of a number too large to picture, by putting it on a human scale.
What it does represent is a claim on future taxes. The debt is serviced out of general taxation, so the larger it is, the more of what you pay funds interest rather than services.
Why does it use everyone, not just taxpayers?
Because that is how the standard per-capita figure is defined, and it is what the ONS population estimate supports. There are roughly 33 million income tax payers against a population of 68.35 million, so a per-taxpayer figure would be about double. Both are defensible; the per-head number is the one used consistently across international comparisons.
What does "years of your tax to clear it" mean?
Your share of the debt divided by your annual income tax and National Insurance. It assumes every penny you pay goes to debt repayment and nothing else — no NHS, no schools, no pensions, no interest accruing meanwhile. It is deliberately unrealistic. It exists to show the ratio between what one person contributes and what one person's share amounts to.
Is my income sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation on this page runs in your browser. Nothing you type is transmitted, stored, or logged — there is no server to send it to. This page is a static file.
Why does my share keep going up while I read?
Because the debt does. At roughly £7,010 a second across 68.35 million people, each person's share grows by about a penny every ten seconds — around £8.86 a day. That is not a gimmick; it is the arithmetic of the current rate of borrowing.