What should I ask for?
Enter the take-home pay you want. No button. The figure below is what to put in the negotiation.
What you actually want in hand, after every deduction.
+ Rent, pension basis, NHF
Unlocks rent relief, which lowers the gross you need to ask for.
Blank assumes your full offered gross is pensionable. Fill this in if you already know the split.
Type the take-home you want above — the ask appears here.
Why you can’t just divide by 0.85
The instinct is to take what you want in hand and gross it up by a flat percentage, take-home divided by 0.85, say, and call it a day. That works for a flat tax. Nigeria’s isn’t flat. Pension comes off before tax touches anything, the first ₦800,000 of what’s left is tax-free, and everything above that climbs through five more bands before it tops out at 25%. A flat markup either overshoots or undershoots depending on where you land, and the gap gets bigger the higher you’re asking.
There’s no clean formula to invert by hand either, not one that stays accurate across every income level. What this tool actually does is search for the gross salary, checking your target take-home against it, adjusting up or down, until it lands on the number that produces exactly what you asked for. Not an estimate. A solved answer.
Tip
Rent relief lowers the gross you need to ask for, because it’s 20% of what you actually pay in rent, capped at ₦500,000, subtracted before tax is calculated. If you’re negotiating and you rent, put your real number in above. Skipping it means asking for more gross than you actually need.
The one place “ask for more” backfires
Right around the ₦70,000-a-month minimum wage line, there’s a real quirk in the tax law: gross pay just above that line can produce less take-home than gross pay just at it, because pension suddenly starts being deducted while the extra gross barely covers it. This only matters at very low income levels, but if your target take-home falls in that narrow zone, this tool always hands you the lower, cheaper gross that gets you there, not the technically-also-correct higher one that leaves you worse off.
Worth knowing
The “effective rate” shown above is total deductions (pension, NHF, tax) as a share of the gross you’re asking for, not just the tax portion. It’s the honest number for judging how much of an offer actually reaches you.
Questions people actually ask
Is this the same as the take-home pay calculator?
It runs on the same tax engine but solves the opposite direction. That one takes a gross offer and tells you what lands in your account. This one takes the number you want in your account and tells you what gross to ask for.
Does this account for pension and NHF automatically?
Pension is on by default at 8%, matching the standard employee rate. NHF is off by default since it’s voluntary for most private-sector staff. Toggle either to match your situation.
What if the employer’s offer is already close to my number?
Run their offered gross through the take-home pay calculator (linked above) to see what it actually nets you, then compare that to what you asked for here. The gap tells you exactly how much room is left to negotiate.
Quick sanity check
Assumes standard 8% pension, no NHF, no rent relief claimed. Your own numbers above will differ.
| Target monthly take-home | Ask for this gross | Effective rate |
|---|
Sources
- Nigeria Tax Act 2025, Fourth Schedule — PAYE bands, effective 1 January 2026
- PwC Nigeria, Worldwide Tax Summaries — minimum wage exemption and rent relief structure
- National Pension Commission (PenCom) — 8% employee / 10% employer contribution rate
- PwC Nigeria, Worldwide Tax Summaries — NHF at 2.5%, private-sector voluntary status
Last checked 8 August 2026. Same engine and same sources as the take-home pay calculator, kept in sync.
Estimates only, based on what you enter and current published rules. Not a tax assessment or a guarantee an employer will meet this figure. Confirm with your payroll team or the Nigeria Revenue Service.