Tax of savings interest

Hi, I am an international student and I am studying in UK now. I have around 18622 pound annually PhD stipend form my scholarship. This stipend is tax free. Currently, I am thinking about earn some money by saving account (Not only the Cash ISA), I check some documents but I am not sure how much personal allowance I can get because I am not sure whether my PhD stipend should be identify as salaries. So could you please let me know the Starting rate for savings of my situation? Is that should be 5000 or 1000 or another number cause I am not sure whether I have a Personal Allowance (12,570) as PhD student. Thank you very much!

Hi sc3208,

As the stipend is not taxable, you would have the starter rate of £5000 if you meet the conditions.

Thank you. 

As I am the same situation and I need to ask, does your answer mean that those 5000 is the interest that should be got and not to pay any tax for ? or those 5000 should be substracted from the phd stipend and the interest free are calculated minus the 5000?

Hi,

You can see information on tax on savings here:

Tax on savings interest

Thank you.

Hello, I just wanted to ask a hypothetical question for a similar situation. If a PhD student was earning around £19,000 through the stipend (my understanding is that you still have all of your tax free income- around £12,500), so if you were earning less than that, for example £7,000-£10,000 from demonstrating and if you were to earn money from savings interest (lets say £2,000 or less), would you need to pay any taxes for the money from the savings or is that what the law means when it suggests you can earn up to £5000 from savings interest each year?

Hi ,
 

If your total income including savings interest is less than your tax free allowance of £12,570, you do not need to pay tax on this income. See :  Tax on savings interest  . Thank you .