HMRC published its annual Capital Gains Tax statistics this morning and, for the first time, broke out cryptoassets as their own line. In the 2024 to 2025 tax year 17,600 individuals made Capital Gains Tax-liable disposals of crypto. Between them they reported £13.8 billion of disposal proceeds and £1.38 billion of gains, an average of £78,000 each. Two hundred and forty of them declared gains over £1 million, accounting for £717 million.
The 240 is the number that will carry the headlines and it is the least useful figure in the release. The one that matters is the £78,000 average, because that is not a whale. That is somebody who bought a few thousand pounds of something years ago, sold it, and now has a Self Assessment problem. And the paragraph underneath it matters more still: the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework started in the UK in January 2026, and the first reports from exchanges reach HMRC in the first five months of 2027. Everything above is what people volunteered. From 2027 HMRC gets the other side of the ledger.
What HMRC actually published
The figures come from HMRC's accredited official Capital Gains Tax statistics, published 27 August 2026, and they exist because a dedicated cryptoasset box was added to the Self Assessment return. The shares in the right-hand column are ours, worked from HMRC's own totals.
| 2024-25 cryptoasset disposals | HMRC figure | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Individuals with CGT-liable disposals | 17,600 | — |
| Total disposal proceeds | £13.8bn | £784,000 each |
| Total gains | £1.38bn | 10% of proceeds |
| Average gain per individual | £78,000 | — |
| Individuals reporting gains over £1m | 240 | 1.4% of the 17,600 |
| Gains held by those 240 | £717m | 52% of all gains |
Strip the 240 out and the remaining 17,360 people share £663 million, an average of £38,200 each. The other number worth sitting with is the ratio: £13.8 billion of proceeds produced £1.38 billion of gains, so across the whole population 10% of what moved was profit. Most of that £13.8 billion is people churning positions, not cashing out — which is exactly the behaviour that creates tax bills nobody budgeted for.
What a £78,000 gain costs
GOV.UK sets the Capital Gains tax-free allowance at £3,000 and the rates on gains made from 6 April 2026 at 18% inside the basic rate band and 24% above it, with the basic rate band at £37,700. Here is HMRC's average gain run through those rates for two illustrative people — published rates, not a client file.
| Taxable income | Gain | Taxed at 18% | Taxed at 24% | CGT due | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic rate | £20,000 | £78,000 | £17,700 | £57,300 | £16,938 |
| Higher rate | £50,000 | £78,000 | £0 | £75,000 | £18,000 |
| Gain inside the allowance | any | £3,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
So the average declared crypto gain carries a bill of £16,938 to £18,000, due on 31 January after the tax year ends. Scale that: if every one of the 17,600 used a full £3,000 allowance and paid at 24%, the 2024-25 crypto gains would raise about £318 million. The real figure is lower, because some are basic rate payers and losses and reliefs come off first, but it sets the ceiling. HMRC states in the same release that its cryptoasset education and compliance work generated an extra £168 million of Capital Gains Tax in 2024-25 on its own. On the same illustrative basis, the 240 millionaires alone account for around £172 million. Two hundred and forty people are the size of the entire nudge campaign.
The trap: a swap is a disposal
HMRC's guidance on selling cryptoassets lists four disposals: selling tokens, exchanging them for a different type of cryptoasset, spending them on goods or services, and giving them away to anyone other than a spouse, civil partner or charity. The second one is where people get caught.
An illustration. You built a pooled cost of £30,000 in bitcoin across several purchases. In the 2025-26 tax year you moved the lot into ether, when the bitcoin was worth £110,000. That is a disposal at market value: an £80,000 gain, less the £3,000 allowance, taxed at 24% for a higher rate payer. That is £18,480 of Capital Gains Tax on a £77,000 taxable gain. Not a penny of sterling reached your bank account, and the bill is due 31 January 2027.
It gets worse if the replacement token falls. GOV.UK's guidance on Capital Gains Tax losses is that a loss comes off gains in the same tax year, and anything unused carries forward. It does not carry back. A 2026-27 crash does nothing for a 2025-26 bill. Our capital gains calculator will do the arithmetic on your own numbers in about a minute.
The £50,000 rule catches people who owe nothing
This one is quietly missed every year. GOV.UK's Capital Gains Tax guidance says that if you are registered for Self Assessment you must report disposals where the total you sold the assets for was more than £50,000, for 2023-24 onwards. That is proceeds, not profit. Trade in and out across a year, move £120,000 of disposals through an exchange and finish £1,200 up, and you owe no tax — the gain is under the allowance — but the disposals still belong on the return. Given HMRC's own figure of £784,000 of average proceeds per person, a very large share of those 17,600 crossed that line without the gain to match.
Where this touches a business, not just a person
Paying anyone in tokens is a payroll event. HMRC's guidance on receiving cryptoassets classes exchange tokens like bitcoin as readily convertible assets. A UK employer has to run income tax and National Insurance through PAYE before paying, estimating the value and deducting the tax from other wages in the same period. Doing it after the fact is a correction, not a choice.
Staking and mining are income, not gains. Where you are not trading, HMRC treats tokens from mining, staking, lending or DeFi as other taxable income. There is a £1,000 trading and miscellaneous income allowance; between £1,000 and £2,500 you contact HMRC, and above £2,500 you register for Self Assessment.
Taking crypto as payment is a disposal for your customer and turnover for you. The sterling value on the day is what goes in the books, and the token's movement afterwards is a separate matter.
Three things to do before 5 October
1. Export the full transaction history from every exchange and wallet, now. Not the year-end balance — every transaction, including coin-to-coin swaps. Exchanges close, delist and lose history, and under Section 104 pooling you need acquisition costs going back to the first buy to work out a gain at all.
2. If 2025-26 produced gains over £3,000 or proceeds over £50,000 and you are not in Self Assessment, register by 5 October 2026. That is GOV.UK's statutory deadline to notify for the year ended 5 April 2026, and missing it carries a penalty. The return and the payment are then due by 31 January 2027.
3. If an earlier year was wrong, use the disclosure service before the data arrives. HMRC's crypto disclosure service lets you correct unpaid tax voluntarily. The number of years you have to disclose depends on behaviour: four years where you took reasonable care, longer where you did not. Coming forward before HMRC has the exchange data is a materially different conversation from coming forward after.
What is still open
Three things are not settled. HMRC's online service for receiving these reports is not live yet — its own provider guidance says so and promises an update. What HMRC does with the data from mid-2027 is not published either; the obvious precedent is the nudge letter campaigns that followed the Common Reporting Standard, but that is a precedent, not an announcement. And the Capital Gains Tax rates themselves are a live Budget question every autumn, so the 18% and 24% above hold for gains made from 6 April 2026 and nothing further out is fixed. We will update this page when the Budget lands.
None of this is exotic. It is record-keeping, pooling arithmetic and a deadline — ordinary tax planning work, done before the year end rather than in the last week of January. If crypto sits alongside a business you also run, it is worth looking at both together, which is what our small business accounting and payroll work is for.