HMRC Says 17,600 UK Taxpayers Reported £1.38B in Crypto Gains

HM Revenue and Customs has reported that 17,600 UK taxpayers declared £1.38 billion in taxable cryptocurrency gains for the year ended April 5, 2025. According to the figures published on August 27, 240 individuals reported more than £1 million each in crypto capital gains.

Crypto gains appear separately for the first time

The disclosure marks the first time HMRC has broken cryptocurrency gains out as a separate category after adding a dedicated section to the UK’s self-assessment return. The authority said the average taxable digital-asset gain among those reporting was £78,000, while almost 90% of the taxpayers in the dataset were men.

The 240 largest reporters accounted for £717 million of the total. Those figures describe declared taxable gains rather than trading volume or the total value of crypto held in the UK. Investors still need to determine whether disposals, swaps or other activity create reporting obligations, as outlined in our broader crypto tax guide.

International data sharing starts in 2027

HMRC is implementing the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, which requires participating crypto service providers to transmit customer information to tax authorities. The UK authority expects to begin receiving that data in 2027, giving it a new way to compare platform records with disclosures submitted by individual taxpayers.

The reporting framework will arrive as more regulated platforms expand access to digital assets in Britain. Recent product growth includes Coinbase’s unified crypto and stock offering for UK users, adding to the volume of activity that may eventually be covered by standardized reporting.

Compliance work is already producing revenue

HMRC said its compliance and education activity generated an additional £168 million in capital gains tax during the 2024-25 fiscal year. The authority did not state how much of that additional collection came specifically from cryptocurrency cases.

The new breakdown nevertheless gives regulators and taxpayers a clearer baseline for the scale of declared crypto profits. With service-provider reporting still more than a year away, the present figures continue to rely primarily on information submitted through personal tax returns. Future disclosures may therefore produce a wider dataset once exchanges and custodians begin sending standardized records directly to participating tax authorities.