UK Crypto Tax Calculator

Capital gains tax at 18% if the gain falls within your unused basic rate band and 24% above it, after an annual exempt amount of £3,000 for 2026/27. Gains stack on top of your income, so someone earning £60,000 has no basic rate band left and pays 24% on everything. Staking, mining and most airdrop receipts are different — they are income on receipt at sterling value, taxed at your marginal rate of 20%, 40% or 45%, with a separate capital gains computation when you later dispose of those tokens.

More than most people expect. Selling for pounds is a disposal, but so is swapping one token for another, spending crypto on goods or services, and gifting it to anyone other than your spouse or civil partner. Each of these crystallises a gain or loss measured in sterling at the date of the transaction. Simply moving tokens between your own wallets is not a disposal. Under the current rules, depositing into a lending protocol or a liquidity pool can itself be a disposal — which is exactly what the draft Finance Bill 2026-27 legislation would change.

Through three matching rules applied in order. First the same-day rule: a disposal is matched against any acquisition of the same token on the same day. Then the 30-day bed-and-breakfast rule: any remaining disposal is matched against acquisitions in the following 30 days, which stops you selling to bank a loss and immediately buying back. Anything still unmatched comes out of the section 104 pool, a weighted average of everything you have spent on that token divided by the units held. Each token has its own pool.

£3,000. It covers all your chargeable gains for the year combined — crypto, shares, second properties — not £3,000 per asset class. It was £12,300 as recently as 2022/23, so the shelter has shrunk by roughly three quarters, which is why almost any crypto gain of substance is now taxable. The allowance cannot be carried forward: if you do not use it in a tax year, it is gone, which is the main argument for realising gains in tranches across tax years rather than all at once.

The central change in the draft legislation published on 13 July 2026 for Finance Bill 2026-27. Where a crypto asset is transferred as part of a qualifying lending arrangement or into a liquidity pool, the transfer produces neither a gain nor a loss, and the base cost of the asset given up rolls into the asset received back. The tax point moves to the eventual real disposal. It ends the current position under which moving a position inside a protocol can generate a tax bill on a paper gain with no sterling received. The technical consultation closed on 7 September 2026.

That is the proposal in the draft Finance Bill 2026-27 legislation: certain stablecoins would be treated as exempt assets, so disposals of them would not be chargeable events. The practical effect is large for active traders, because routing every position through a dollar stablecoin currently generates two reportable disposals per round trip for negligible economic gain. The precise definition of which stablecoins qualify could still change before enactment, so the exemption should not be relied on for transactions undertaken now.

Income, in most cases, at the sterling value on the date each reward is received, taxed at your marginal rate. Those tokens then acquire a base cost equal to that sterling value, so a later disposal produces a separate capital gain or loss measured from that figure. The two charges are sequential rather than alternative, which means the same tokens can be taxed twice in economic terms — once as income on receipt and again as a gain on disposal — with only the receipt value sheltering the second charge.

Yes, and it is one of the most commonly missed reliefs. Capital losses on crypto are set against gains in the same tax year first, and any excess carries forward indefinitely — but only if you claim it, and the claim must be made within four years of the end of the tax year in which the loss arose. Tokens that have become genuinely worthless can be the subject of a negligible value claim. Note that if the proposed no-gain-no-loss rules take effect, a loss on a pool deposit will no longer arise as an allowable loss at all.

Sometimes. You need to report on a self assessment return if your total gains exceed the £3,000 annual exempt amount, or if your total disposal proceeds exceed a reporting threshold even where the gain is within the allowance, or if you want to claim a loss for carry-forward. Staking and mining income has its own reporting obligation regardless of the capital position. Given how many disposals a single year of ordinary trading produces, the safer working assumption for anyone active is that a return is required.

Twice, in effect. The UK taxes you as a resident and the US taxes you as a citizen on worldwide income. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so a token-to-token swap is a taxable exchange, there is no US stablecoin exemption and no US equivalent of the proposed UK rollover for pool and loan transfers. A foreign tax credit relieves UK capital gains tax against the US charge on the same gain — but where the UK exempts a gain, no UK tax exists to credit, so the US charge stands unrelieved. The UK reform therefore makes your overall position worse, not better.

No. The annual exempt amount is a UK relief with no US counterpart, so a gain sheltered by it is fully taxable in the US at up to 20% plus the 3.8% net investment income tax if long-term, or at ordinary rates up to 37% if held twelve months or less. Worse, because the UK charges nothing on that slice, there is no UK tax available as a foreign tax credit against the US liability. For a US person the exempt amount is worth only what it saves in the UK, which on a large gain is very little.

Because each country computes the gain in its own currency using the exchange rate on the acquisition date and the disposal date. A dollar-denominated token bought and sold at the same dollar price shows no US gain, but if sterling weakened between the two dates the same trade shows a sterling gain — and the reverse produces a US gain on a UK loss. This is not an error or an aggressive position; it is the arithmetic both authorities require. Neither will accept a computation prepared in the other's currency.

Potentially on several forms. Digital asset transactions go on Form 8949 and Schedule D, with the digital asset question answered on the face of Form 1040. Depending on how the holding is structured, an account with a non-US exchange or custodian may be a foreign financial account for FBAR purposes and a specified foreign financial asset for Form 8938. The reporting net is also tightening independently: the OECD Cryptoasset Reporting Framework brings service providers into automatic information exchange and the US is phasing in broker reporting on Form 1099-DA.

It applies the 2026/27 rates of 18% and 24%, the £3,000 annual exempt amount, correct stacking of gains on top of taxable income against the £37,700 basic rate band, marginal-rate treatment of staking receipts, and a switch for the proposed no-gain-no-loss and stablecoin rules, plus a US layer with a foreign tax credit. You must supply a cost basis already computed under the same-day, 30-day and section 104 rules — the calculator does not do the matching for you. It also does not model trading-versus-investment status, negligible value claims, or DeFi arrangements that fall outside the qualifying definitions.