National Insurance: freeport upper secondary threshold

The pay ceiling up to which an employer pays no National Insurance for a new employee working at a freeport tax site.

Weekly	Monthly	Annual
£481.00	£2,083.00	£25,000.00

Corroborated Act of Parliament Great Britain in force since 2022-04-06

Checked against its sources: statute verified 2026-09-21·guidance verified 2026-09-21

Scope: Less than half the under-21, apprentice and veterans upper secondary thresholds, which stand at the upper earnings limit; this one does not. NI category letters F, I, L and S. The Act states two further cadences this record does not carry, because they are RULES and not figures: s.8(1)(b)(iii)-(v) compute a multiple of a week, a multiple of a month and any other period from the £25,000, and s.8(3) fixes their rounding (up to the next whole pound for (iii) and (iv), to the nearest penny for (v)). The eligibility conditions are ss.1-4 — a new employment beginning in the window, earnings in the first three years, and an expectation that 60% or more of employed time is spent in a single freeport tax site — read here from the Act AS ENACTED, the view the archive holds; s.3 lets the Treasury move the last start date to any day up to 5 April 2031 and alter the conditions, so the conditions are cited, not carried.

Current sources

Source A · LegislationNational Insurance Contributions Act 2022, c. 9 s. 8(1) ("the upper secondary threshold is £481", with "where the earnings period is a month, £2,083" and "where the earnings period is a year, £25,000" in s. 8(1)(b)(i) and (ii); relief available for the tax years beginning 6 April 2022 to 6 April 2026)

retrieved 2026-07-25

Source B · Official guidancehttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-thresholds-for-employers-2026-to-2027 ("Freeport upper secondary threshold" — "£481 per week / £2,083 per month / £25,000 per year")

retrieved 2026-07-29

History

Value

From

Status

Sources

Show table (1 row)

Weekly	Monthly	Annual
£481.00	£2,083.00	£25,000.00

2022-04-06

—

Corroborated

Receipt

Everything above is reproducible and independently checkable — no trust in this site required (how verification works).

Figure ID: employment.ni.class1.freeport_ust
Name in the API: Class 1 National Insurance: freeport upper secondary threshold
Record fields (source type · unit · jurisdiction · status): act·GBP·GB·corroborated
Record hash (canonical JSON, SHA-256): sha256:c1f38243dad788384312a19f5f70a71c89d354f181d6b42f52bc86ef7c2059e6
Source snapshots (SHA-256): Legislation: sha256:36975382be2947b874378bd63f512d580b37f8553770dbeb824eca998bffe6ad; Official guidance: sha256:2b130359261b54fc8f27f3e53cade20f559a6035397c2e3845de72e21ea4eede
Listed in the signed manifest: release 3.0.0 manifest · record_hashes["employment.ni.class1.freeport_ust"]
Machine-readable record: /v1/figures/employment.ni.class1.freeport_ust · current only: /v1/figures/employment.ni.class1.freeport_ust/current

Compiler's notes

The AMOUNT is enacted by the Act; the WINDOW is extended by instrument — the veterans threshold's story in s.8(2), told one subsection earlier. NICA 2022 s.8(1) states the figure outright — "the upper secondary threshold is £481", with £2,083 for a monthly earnings period and £25,000 for an annual one — and no instrument has ever substituted the amount. Four have amended s.8(1), and every one is a "Words in s. 8(1) substituted" note whose located span holds nothing but the tax-year list: S.I. 2023/236 reg. 6(a) (6.4.2023), S.I. 2024/249 reg. 3 (6.4.2024), S.I. 2025/288 reg. 6(3) (6.4.2025) and S.I. 2026/231 reg. 6(3)(a) (6.4.2026). That is D-RD-2: an amendment whose every located span is window words moves a provision's dates, not its value, so the Act still states this figure by its own force. The subsection now runs for the tax years beginning with 6 April 2022, 6 April 2023, 6 April 2024, 6 April 2025 and 6 April 2026 — the window the act_probe block records, 6 April 2022 to 5 April 2027, which is ONE YEAR SHORTER than the veterans window because S.I. 2025/288 and S.I. 2026/231 each added a year to s.8(2) that they did not add to s.8(1). effective_from is 6 April 2022, read from s.8(1)'s own opening words in the archived enacted view — "For the purposes of section 1, for the tax year beginning with 6 April 2022" — and not from the section's commencement, which its I-note gives as Royal Assent, 15 March 2022. The value rides honest_carry: there is no substitution of the amount for the prose-single chain to read, and the probe's ACT-HOLDS verdict is the evidence that earns that exemption. THE INVESTMENT ZONE THRESHOLD IS A DIFFERENT ID AND IS NOT AUTHORED: the archived s.8 never says "investment zone", s.8(1) is expressed for the purposes of section 1 alone, and no F-note on the section names an amending Act that widened it. GOV.UK's employer rates page states the same £481/£2,083/£25,000 for an "Investment Zone upper secondary threshold", but guidance corroborates and never authorises, so that id waits for its provision.