UK Crypto Tax Rate: How Much Will You Pay?

Need to know the HMRC tax rates and brackets for 2021-2022 ahead of the January 31st tax deadline? We got you. Read our UK Tax Rates Guide, which covers everything you need to know about UK tax rates for the 2021-2022 financial year, 2022-2023 financial year, Capital Gains Tax rates and more!

We're only covering UK crypto tax rates in this guide... if you want to learn about how crypto is taxed in the UK - read our ultimate UK crypto tax guide instead.

UK Crypto Tax Rates

When it comes to crypto - there's two tax rates you need to know about in the UK, your Income Tax rate and your Capital Gains Tax rate. Both will vary depending on how much you earn.

You can learn everything you need to know about crypto tax in our UK crypto tax guide, but in brief:

• You'll pay Capital Gains Tax on any gain when you sell, swap, spend or gift crypto (excluding to your spouse).
• Your Capital Gains Tax rate is 10% or 20% depending on how much you earn.
• You get a Capital Gains Tax allowance each year, which is a certain amount of gains you may earn tax free.
• You'll pay Income Tax on crypto viewed as additional income, for example, mining and staking rewards.

Now you know the basics - let's look at how much you'll pay.

Capital Gains Tax Rate UK

The amount of Capital Gains Tax you’ll pay on your crypto gains depends on your regular income and the Income Tax Band you fall into.

Capital Gains Tax Allowance

Every taxpayer in the UK gets an annual allowance, known as the Annual Exempt Amount, and it's no small sum of £12,300 per person, per year. 

This means if you have less than £12,300 in gains, you won’t pay any Capital Gains Tax and you don’t need to report this to the HMRC.

However, in the Autumn Budget Statement 2022, the Chancellor announced this figure would be cut to £6,000 in April 2023, and halved again to £3,000 in April 2024.

This means for the 2021 - 2022 financial year that you'll report in January 2023, you still have the £12,300 allowance. Similarly, in the 2022-2023 financial year that you'll report on in January 2024, you'll still have the £12,300 allowance. But you may wish to optimize your tax position and realize your gains ahead of April 2023 to make the most of the £12,300 allowance ahead of it being cut for the following financial year.

UK Income Tax Bands

Your crypto tax rate will be the same as the highest tax band you fall into as it is considered miscellaneous income. You’ll pay anywhere between 0% to 45% in tax.

You don’t pay the same flat rate of Income Tax on all your earnings. For all English and Welsh taxpayers (bar those earning over £125,140) you’ll have £12,570 tax free. Then you’ll pay 20% tax on your next £37,699 of income and 40% on the next £99,729 of income and 45% in tax on any income over this amount.

It's important to note, these rates are due to change for high earners. The Autumn Statement reduces the additional rate Income Tax threshold from £150,000 to £125,140 from April 2023.

Scottish Income Tax Bands

Scottish taxpayers have slightly different Income Tax Bands. You can see these rates below:

UK Income Tax Allowances

The UK has a personal allowance of £12,570 which you’ll pay no tax on. You don’t get a personal allowance on income if you earn more than £125,140.

As well as this, if you earn less than £1,000 in additional income this isn't subject to Income Tax, thanks to the trading and property allowance. If you’ve earned less than £1,000, you don’t need to declare it to HMRC. If it’s more than £1,000, you’ll need to declare this in your Self Assessment Tax Return.

When to file UK crypto taxes

The UK tax deadline is the 31st of January 2023. You need to report any income from crypto or capital gains from crypto in your self assessment tax return by this date. 

Ideally, you’ll want to submit your tax return before this point as you also need to pay any taxes due by midnight on the 31st of January 2023. 

UK Tax Deadlines 2022 - 2023

There's some important dates you need to be aware of for filing your taxes:

• 6th April 2021: 2021/2022 tax year starts.
• 5th April 2022: 2021/2022 tax year ends.
• 6th April 2022: 2022/2023 tax year starts.
• 5th October 2022: Deadline for registering for Self Assessment registration.
• 31st October 2022: Deadline for Self Assessment Tax Returns submitted by post.
• 30th December 2022: If your tax liability is less than £3,000, if you file your online Self Assessment Tax Return by this date, your taxes will be collected via your tax code.
• 31st January 2023: Deadline to file and pay Self Assessment Tax Returns for 2021 - 2022 financial year.
• 5th April 2023: 2022/2023 tax year ends.
• 6th April 2023: 2023/2024 tax year starts. Capital Gains Tax allowance is cut to £6,000.
• 5th October 2023: Deadline for registering for Self Assessment registration.
• 31st October 2023: Deadline for Self Assessment Tax Returns submitted by post.
• 30th December 2023: If your tax liability is less than £3,000, if you file your online Self Assessment Tax Return by this date, your taxes will be collected via your tax code.
• 31st January 2024: Deadline to file and pay Self Assessment Tax Returns for 2022 - 2023 financial year.

How to file UK crypto taxes with Koinly

There are a couple of ways to file your crypto taxes in the UK. 

If you only have capital gains taxes to pay, you can report any capital gains or losses as they happen using the Government Gateway Service. Of course, this relies on you knowing and keeping track of any capital gains or losses as they happen on each transaction. This is much easier with crypto tax software like Koinly.

If you have crypto taxes that are subject to income tax, you'll need to include these in your Self Assessment Tax Return. You can also include capital gains in this tax return if you'd rather not report gains and losses in real time.

You can file the Self Assessment Tax Return online or post a form in.

If you've not filed an online return before, you'll need to do this at least 20 working days before the tax deadline to give yourself time to register. There are different ways to register depending on whether you're self-employed or employed.

You'll need to keep good records of your crypto transactions including the FMV on the day you purchased, the FMV on the day you sold and any subsequent capital profits or losses, as well as any crypto 'earnings' perceived as income. 

You submit these records to the HMRC, who calculate what you owe based on what you report. You need to pay your Self Assessment Tax Return bill by midnight on the 31st of January 2023, or of course, you can always use an accountant.

Koinly can help you do all of this by identifying the different types of tax applicable to your crypto transactions, calculating your crypto taxes and generating specific forms, like your HMRC Capital Gains Summary crypto tax report. 

We have loads more helpful tax tips in our UK crypto tax guide.