What is the Meeting Tax Calculator?
The Meeting Tax Calculator helps you see how much of your working life goes on meetings.
A few hours of meetings each week might not feel like much. Stretch them across a career and they can add up to years of working time.
Enter a typical week and the calculator shows how much time you have already spent in meetings, how much could still be ahead, and what happens if you cut or shorten some of them.
It does not assume meetings are bad. Plenty are useful. The point is to make the time visible.
How the Calculator Works
Enter your usual meeting hours, working week and how many years you have spent working like this. Add how many years you expect to continue and roughly what share of your meetings you consider useful. The calculator turns that into working years and lets you test different meeting weeks.
Step 1: Enter Your Meeting Week
Enter meeting hours in a normal week, the years that pattern has run, and the years it might continue.
Step 2: Add Your Working Pattern
Add your working hours, weeks per year and roughly how many meetings feel useful.
Step 3: Compare the Years Ahead
See the years already spent in meetings, compare the four options for the years ahead, and review what the freed time could become. Download a CSV if you want the figures in a spreadsheet.
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Illustrative only. The calculator measures time and gross salary value. It cannot decide which meetings are worthwhile.
Understanding Your Results
Look at three things first, then decide what you would actually change.
Your Meeting Lifetime So Far
Start with the total. This turns all the meeting hours you have already worked into full-time working years.
The calculator also shows what share of your week goes on meetings and, separately, the amount you marked as lower value. That lower-value figure is based entirely on your estimate. It is not the calculator deciding which meetings were worthwhile.
What Happens From Here
This is the part you can still change.
The calculator projects your current meeting pattern across the working years you have left. It also shows what a single recurring one-hour meeting adds up to over that period.
That number is often more useful than it sounds. One hour a week for another 10 years at 46 working weeks a year is 460 hours.
1 hour × 46 weeks × 10 years = 460 hours
What Could Change
The four options only change the years ahead. They do not rewrite the meeting time you have already spent.
Compare how many hours or working years each option gives back, then look at what is left in your week.
If you enter a salary, the calculator also puts a gross salary value on that time. That is there to give the hours another perspective. It is not a saving your employer automatically receives.
What Would You Actually Change?
The calculator cannot tell you whether a meeting is worth having.
Some meetings genuinely keep work moving. Others could probably be shorter, less frequent or disappear altogether.
So rather than looking at the biggest number and trying to wipe out meetings, start with the recurring ones.
Which meeting would you shorten or drop first?
Then decide what you want the time back for.
What an ordinary meeting week can add up to
Meetings are easy to shrug off one week at a time. Some are the job, some could be shorter, and some could go. These examples show how three ordinary meeting weeks add up, and what each person tests.
Leah, the team lead short of thinking time
12 meeting hours a week • 9 years so far • 14 years to go • £52,000 salary
Leah spends 12 hours a week in meetings and estimates around 60% are useful. Clearing a whole meeting day saves the most time, but it also removes meetings she values. Instead, she tests dropping only the lower-value meetings. That gives her nearly five hours a week back without touching the meetings she wants to keep.
- Clear a working day: 2.8 years saved, cuts some useful meetings
- Halve her meeting hours: 2.2 years saved, cuts some useful meetings
- Drop the low-value meetings: 1.8 years saved, keeps the useful ones
What Leah takes from it
The biggest cut is not automatically the sensible one. She books the freed time as two recurring two-hour blocks so it does not fill straight back up.
Marcus, seven years from retirement
Age 58 • Stop work at 65 • 20 meeting hours a week • 30% useful
Marcus has carried about 20 meeting hours a week for 18 years. That comes to 9.6 full-time years, and nothing on this page changes it. With seven years left, the question is what his last working years look like. Dropping the meetings he feels add little would save 2.6 years and give him 14 hours a week back.
- Drop the low-value meetings: 2.6 years saved
- Halve his meeting hours: 1.9 years saved
- Clear a working day: 1.4 years saved
What Marcus tests
Fourteen hours is a sizeable chunk of his week. He uses the result to explore whether some of that time could support shorter days, a reduced working week or a different role before retirement. The One More Year Calculator and the Part-Time Work Break-Even Calculator help with the money side.
Siobhan, part-time with a lean meeting week
25-hour week • 4 meeting hours • 10 years to go • 80% useful
Siobhan works 25 hours a week on £24,000, so a working year for her is 25 hours times 46 weeks. Her four meeting hours a week add up to about one of those years so far. She marks 80% as useful, so dropping the low-value ones would save only 0.3 of a year, about 50 minutes a week. The one weekly meeting figure is more useful to her.
- One hour-long weekly meeting over 10 years: 460 hours
- That is 0.4 of her working year, or £9,600 at her gross salary rate
- Moving it to fortnightly halves that to 230 hours
What Siobhan tests
Not every result needs a big change. Her week is already lean, so she looks at one recurring catch-up and asks whether fortnightly would do the same job.
From the founder
Ryan’s thoughts
I don’t think meetings are the problem in themselves. Some of the most useful hours I’ve spent working have been talking things through with other people.
It’s the recurring ones I’d look at.
An hour every week does not sound like much. Stretch it over another ten years and suddenly it is hundreds of hours.
I’d use this calculator to find one or two meetings that could be shorter, less frequent or simply disappear. Then decide what you actually want that time back for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Meeting Tax Calculator?
The Meeting Tax Calculator shows how much of your working life goes on meetings, counted as full-time years. It then compares four ways your week could change, and what the time you get back could become.
What does “meeting tax” mean?
“Meeting tax” is simply a way of making recurring meeting time visible. The calculator takes the hours that disappear into meetings each week and stretches them across your working years. Eight hours a week for 20 years at 46 working weeks a year is 7,360 hours.
Does a high meeting total mean the meetings were wasted?
No. The full total counts useful meetings too. Only the lower-value figure uses the share you mark as less useful.
What is a full-time working year?
Your hours in a working week, times the working weeks you enter. The starting point is 37.5 hours and 46 weeks, which is 1,725 hours. Change both if your year is different.
Do the options change the time already spent?
No. The four options only change the years still ahead. The time already spent stays as it is.
How is salary calculated?
Salary is optional. If you add it, the calculator spreads your gross salary across your working hours and applies that rate to meeting time. Tax and pension contributions are not taken off. It is a way of putting a value on the time, not money anyone has lost.
Can I include meeting preparation and travel?
Only by adding those hours to the weekly meeting figure. The model does not add them for you.
What happens to the time I get back?
The calculator turns the hours an option frees up into a few everyday examples: focused work, a longer lunch, an earlier finish or time at home. They are not predictions. In practice, freed time often fills up with other work unless you decide what it is for.
How is this different from the Bullshit Jobs Calculator?
The Bullshit Jobs Calculator looks at low-value work more widely. Meeting Tax stays with meeting hours: the time already spent, and a few ways the years ahead could look.
Can I export my results?
Yes. After the results, Get my CSV downloads the years already spent, the week, and the four options. You will be asked for your name and email.
Trust and education
Certified Money First Aider®
These calculators are built by a Certified Money First Aider to help you think more clearly about money and time. Money First Aid® is about practical, non-judgemental support for financial wellbeing. The calculators can certainly help you make informed decisions, but they are not regulated financial advice.
Behind Retirement Calculators
Built from the questions I was asking myself
I'm Ryan, the person behind Retirement Calculators. I started the site after selling an online business and trying to understand what our pensions, ISAs, investments and property actually meant for the way we wanted to live.
The calculators are built around those real decisions: whether you could work less, retire earlier, spend more now or use your money differently. They will not give you a perfect answer, but they can make the trade-offs much easier to see.
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Disclaimer: The Meeting Tax Calculator is an illustration only and is not financial or career advice. It measures time, and gross salary value if you add a salary. It does not calculate Income Tax or pension contributions, and it cannot tell which meetings are worth having. The everyday examples of freed time are suggestions, not a prediction of how your week will change.