What’s Week 53 and how does it affect me?
There was something a little bit unusual about the 2025/26 tax year – it contained 53 pay days, instead of the more normal 52. This could have a small effect on your pay, so we’d like to explain.
Your annual tax-free personal allowance is split into 52 equal amounts and one portion is given to you each week of the year. This is because a year usually has 52 weekly pay days. However, because a year actually has 52 full weeks plus an extra day or two, every so often it works out that there are 53 pay days in the same tax year.
When a 53rd pay day comes along, there’s no tax-free allowance left to use.
How will this affect me?
Thankfully, HMRC has a process in place to stop this impacting you too much. They added an extra chunk to your 2025/26 allowance, which is then deducted from your 2026/27 allowance. It’s designed to prevent a big drop in your take-home pay in Week 53.
For most people, it means you could have ended up slightly underpaying tax in 2025/26, and paying a bit more each week in 2026/27 to balance it out. There’s nothing you need to do – it’s all taken care of automatically.