There is a harder point sitting alongside it. A Scottish earnings arrestment has no percentage cap at all, so once the percentage rates bite the share of your pay it takes climbs as your earnings climb.

Here is where the 50% actually bites, one worked example of the gap between half the excess and half your wages, and what moves the figure. How much can they take from your wages in Scotland holds the tables themselves.

Only to the part of your net earnings above £3,750.00 a month or £863.06 a week. Everything below those figures is charged at the lower band rates instead.

The one figure this article turns on

The top band of the monthly table opens at £3,750.00 of net earnings, and the weekly equivalent opens at £863.06. Those figures were substituted into Schedule 2 to the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 and have been in force since 6 April 2025.

The bands underneath them are set out in full in how much can they take from your wages and in the protected earnings limits, so this page does not repeat them.

Which table your employer reads

Weekly pay uses the weekly table, monthly pay uses the monthly table and daily pay uses the daily table. There is no fortnightly table.

The step by step arithmetic sits in how a wage arrestment is calculated on monthly pay and the same thing on weekly pay.

The rate is applied to net earnings, not to your gross pay

Every band in the tables is expressed in net earnings for the pay period. Net earnings is a defined statutory figure rather than a general description of your take-home pay.

Section 73(1) of the 1987 Act sets out what comes off first, and what counts as net earnings takes that definition apart.

Because the 50% is charged only on the excess, while the pay underneath the top threshold is charged at lower rates. The fixed element that replaces those lower rates is worth less than half of the pay it covers, and that shortfall never closes.

One worked example, taken apart

Take net earnings of £5,000.00 for a month. Here is what the top band does with it.

The deduction comes to £1,250.00 for that month, which is 25% of the net earnings it was taken from. Half would have been £2,500.00.

The gap is the same at every level of pay above the threshold

This is the part worth knowing. In the top band the deduction is always exactly £1,250.00 a month less than half your net earnings, whatever those net earnings come to.

The reason is the fixed £625.00 element. It stands in for the lower band rates charged on the first £3,750.00, and it is £1,250.00 short of half of that amount.

On the weekly table the same constant is £287.69. Within that band the share of your pay rises as you earn more, because a fixed shortfall matters less against a larger number, but it never closes.

So the share rises and the half is never reached

At the example above the deduction is a quarter of the month. Push the net earnings higher and the percentage creeps up towards half without arriving.

That is the honest answer to the question in the title, and it is arithmetic rather than a concession. Guidance on diligence generally sits on mygov.scot.

No. A Scottish earnings arrestment has no percentage cap and no percentage floor, and your protection is a fixed cash amount instead.

Three wage deductions, three different floors

There is a 60% figure in this area and it is real, but it belongs to two other deductions. Neither of them is interchangeable with an earnings arrestment.

The direct earnings attachment rates and the 60% rule are published by the Department for Work and Pensions in its employer’s guide to direct earnings attachments, and how a direct earnings attachment differs sets the two side by side.

What the nil band does instead

The fixed cash band does the work a percentage floor does elsewhere. Below £750.00 a month the deduction for that period is nil.

A nil period does not end the arrestment, which is covered in what happens if you earn below the threshold.

Why the distinction matters when you check a figure

The 60% rule belongs to a direct earnings attachment and to a child maintenance deduction from earnings order. Applied to an earnings arrestment it gives the wrong answer in both directions.

It understates the protection at low pay, where the arrestment takes nothing at all. It overstates it at high pay, where the arrestment has no ceiling.

Only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment at a time, so a second ordinary creditor cannot simply add another arrestment. A current maintenance arrestment is the exception and can run alongside one.

A second creditor has to apply for a conjoined arrestment order

A conjoined arrestment order consolidates the debts into a single deduction, which the sheriff clerk receives from your employer and distributes.

While one is in force it is not competent to execute a separate earnings arrestment or current maintenance arrestment against the same employment. Whether you can have more than one wage arrestment works through the combinations.

Where a current maintenance arrestment runs alongside

A current maintenance arrestment uses a protected daily rate of £24.66. It is worked out separately from the ordinary arrestment, and both come off the same pay.

So a combined figure is higher than the arrestment on its own. Each deduction is still calculated under its own rules rather than against a shared ceiling.

Where a child maintenance order is in the mix

A child maintenance deduction from earnings order can outrank an earnings arrestment. Section 73(1)(d) takes off, before net earnings are worked out, any deduction from earnings order that the child support regulations give priority over diligences against earnings, so the tables are then applied to what is left.

That is a statutory mechanism rather than a payroll convention. It means the arrestment tables are applied to a smaller figure, so the arrestment deduction itself comes down.

No. There is no affordability or hardship ground against an ordinary earnings arrestment, and a sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction because you cannot manage on what is left.

What section 50 of the 1987 Act actually covers

Section 50 is the only review power against an earnings arrestment. Section 50(1) is a declarator that the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, using Form 32 under rule 40(1), and the Scottish courts publish the court rules.

Section 50(3) is a determination of a dispute about how the arrestment is operating, using Form 33 under rule 41(1). Neither has a time limit and neither considers what you can afford.

Sections 73Q and 73R reach funds and moveable property rather than wages, which what an unduly harsh application is sets out in full.

What does move the figure

The pattern in that table is the whole point. Your own net earnings move the deduction, and everything else either ends the arrestment or does nothing.

Yes. The table is applied afresh to each pay period’s net earnings, so a bigger period produces a bigger deduction and a quieter one produces a smaller deduction.

There is no fixed monthly sum

Your employer is not instructed to take a set sum. Section 47(1) requires them to deduct a sum calculated under the Act from your net earnings on every pay day, so the figure comes from the table rather than from a fixed instruction.

That is why the figure can move without anything being agreed or reviewed. Whether overtime increases the deduction follows the same mechanism through a busy month.

It falls as readily as it rises

A drop in net earnings feeds straight into a smaller deduction for that period. Nobody has to apply for that to happen.

If net earnings fall below the nil band the deduction for that period is nil. The arrestment itself stays in place for later periods.

Look at the statutory routes that displace the arrestment rather than at ways of arguing the figure down. A Debt Payment Programme, sequestration and a protected trust deed each end an earnings arrestment by operation of law.

The Debt Arrangement Scheme

An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment, and interest, fees and charges are frozen and written off on completion.

It is run by the Accountant in Bankruptcy through the DAS Administrator, and our guide to the scheme covers who can use it.

Other routes to raise with an adviser

• A statutory moratorium, which gives six months of protection and is available once per rolling 12 months.
• A time to pay order, where the debt outstanding is £25,000 or less excluding interest. If the sheriff grants one, the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment, though it is not settled whether an earnings arrestment on its own opens the door to an application, so ask a money adviser or the sheriff clerk whether one is competent on your facts.
• Sequestration or the Minimal Asset Process, where an existing earnings arrestment ceases to have effect on the date of sequestration.
• A protected trust deed, where existing arrestments cease on the date of protection rather than the date of signing.

Sequestration and trust deeds sit under the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, and each carries consequences worth talking through before you choose one.

Check the balance as you go

Money already taken is credited against the debt and is not usually refunded. Check the position with the creditor, and ask for an up to date balance so you can see what is left.

Free advice is available from Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, Money Advice Scotland and National Debtline, and our solutions pages set out what each route does to an arrestment already running.