The mechanics are less personal than that. Your employer is applying a fixed statutory table to whatever your net earnings happen to be that week or month.

Here is how the recalculation works, what an extra shift is actually worth to you, and the one crossing point where it can go the other way. What counts as net earnings covers the figure the table reads.

By taking your net earnings for that period and reading the figure off the statutory table for your pay frequency. The deduction is worked out from the net earnings actually paid in that period, so each period stands on its own.

What section 47(1) requires of your employer

Section 47(1) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 requires an employer served with a schedule to deduct a sum calculated under section 49 or 49A from your net earnings on every pay day, and to pay it to the creditor as soon as is reasonably practicable.

Your employer is not instructed to take a set sum, so the figure comes from the table rather than from a fixed instruction. That is why it moves without anything being agreed or reviewed.

Which table applies to you

Weekly pay uses the weekly table, monthly pay the monthly table and daily pay the daily table, and there is no fortnightly table. The bands are set out in how much they can take from your wages and worked through in the monthly calculation and the weekly calculation.

The current rates were substituted into Schedule 2 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 and have been in force since 6 April 2025, with no April 2026 uprating made. Whether the tables change every April covers why that matters.

What is recalculated, and what is not

Only the top two lines move. Everything below them carries on regardless of how busy the month was.

Because it forms part of your net earnings for that period, and net earnings is the only figure the tables recognise. The Act reaches overtime as wages or salary, or as an emolument payable under a contract of service.

How the Act reaches each kind of payment

Section 73(2) says earnings ‘means’ those four things rather than ‘includes’ them, so the list is closed. Anything outside it is not earnings for this purpose.

The Act does not name overtime, and that is worth saying

Neither overtime nor holiday pay appears anywhere in section 73(2). Both are ordinarily caught by paragraph (a) or paragraph (b), and neither appears in the exclusion list at section 73(3).

The conclusion is secure. It just rests on reading two paragraphs rather than on the Act naming the payment.

Overtime reaches the calculation net, not gross

Overtime is taxed, and pension contributions come off before net earnings are reached. So the amount that feeds the table is smaller than the figure on the overtime line.

An extra £200 of gross pay does not add £200 to the figure the table is applied to. Whether the deduction is taken before or after tax sets out the order it all happens in.

Above the protected threshold the table charges a fixed cash amount plus a percentage of the excess, from 15% at the lower end up to 50% in the top band. In the first band the charge is the greater of £10.00 and 15% of the excess, so a small excess can attract more than 15%.

A worked example

So £400.00 of extra net earnings cost £80.00 of extra deduction in that example. You kept £320.00 of it.

On the weekly table, net earnings of £400.00 produce £36.85 for that week. The same stepping applies, on smaller figures.

The bands step, they do not jump

Moving into a higher band does not re-price the pay underneath it. The higher rate applies only to the part of your net earnings inside that band.

That is why, once the percentage rates bite, the share of your total pay rises slowly rather than lurching. It also means an extra shift is never taxed twice by the table.

They do, and the Act is more explicit about them. Fees, bonuses, commission and other emoluments payable under a contract of service are named at section 73(2)(b).

A one-off payment affects one period

A bonus raises the deduction for the period it is paid in and nothing beyond that. The next period is worked out from its own net earnings figure.

Nothing resets to a higher level. The next period’s deduction is worked out from the net earnings actually paid in that period.

Where a large payment reaches the top band

The top monthly band takes 50% of everything above £3,750.00 of net earnings, and the weekly equivalent applies above £863.06. There is no overall percentage cap, which whether an arrestment can take more than half your wages works through with a single example.

The 60% floor belongs to a DWP direct earnings attachment and a child maintenance deduction from earnings order. It does nothing for an earnings arrestment.

Ask before you assume an error

If a period has produced a much larger deduction than usual, ask payroll to confirm the net earnings figure they used for it. Why an arrestment can take more than you expected lists the usual causes in order.

In every band you keep at least half of any extra net earnings, and more than half in every band below the top one. There is one narrow crossing point where that is not true.

What you keep in each band

In the 15% band, once the excess is past the £10.00 minimum, you keep 85 pence of every extra net pound, and in the 20% band 80 pence. Even in the top band you keep half.

Set that against the money you would simply not earn by refusing the shift. Do that comparison on your own figures rather than on an average.

The one crossing point that can leave you worse off

The first monthly band charges £10.00 or 15% of the excess over £750.00, whichever is greater. That minimum is the catch.

Net earnings of £749.00 produce no deduction at all, leaving £749.00. Net earnings of £755.00 produce £10.00, leaving £745.00.

So a few pounds over the threshold can cost more than they add, until the excess is large enough for the 15% to beat the minimum. What happens if you earn below the threshold covers the nil period itself.

Cutting your hours does not shrink the debt

Staying under the line shrinks your income faster than it shrinks the deduction. The balance does not go away, and the arrestment stays live waiting for your pay to recover.

Yes, automatically. The next period is calculated from that period’s net earnings, so a quiet month produces the lower figure without anyone applying for anything.

Nobody has to be told

You do not need to write to the creditor, contact the sheriff officers or ask payroll for a review. The table does it on the next pay run.

If your pay falls below the threshold

Net earnings of £750.00 a month or less, £172.61 a week or less, or £24.66 a day or less produce a nil deduction for that period. The arrestment itself stays in force, which the below-threshold guide covers in full.

It picks up again the moment your net earnings rise back over the line. The protected earnings limits set out each threshold with the date it came into force.

Seasonal and variable hours

Where your hours swing about, so does the deduction. Budgeting on a quiet month will understate what comes off in a busy one.

Working the figure out in advance from the table for your pay frequency is worth the ten minutes. It turns a surprise into a plan.

Look at the routes that displace the arrestment rather than at ways of arguing the figure down. A sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction because you cannot afford it.

Why there is no hardship route

Section 50 of the 1987 Act is the only review power, and it covers validity and disputes about how the arrestment is operating. It carries no affordability ground.

The unduly harsh test applies to arrested funds and moveable property rather than to wages. General guidance on diligence sits on mygov.scot.

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 governed by the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011 and administered by the Accountant in Bankruptcy, and our guide to the scheme covers who can use it.

There is no statutory maximum length for a programme. The average runs to around six years, on the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s statistics for April to June 2026.

The other routes to raise with an adviser

• A statutory moratorium, giving six months of protection from diligence, one 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, the Minimal Asset Process or a protected trust deed, each of which ends an existing arrestment by statute.

Which of them fits depends on your debts and your circumstances, and which debt solution is best if you have a wage arrestment sets them against each other.