HMRC data has shown that CGT receipts for January 2026 were £16.985 billion compared to £10.033 billion in January 2025. Total CGT receipts in Feb 2025 to Jan 2026 were £20.6 billion, up from £14.3 billion in the previous 12-month period, a rise of 44 per cent. Jason Hollands, Managing Director at wealth management firm Evelyn Partners, comments on the position.
That is a big upswing in the CGT take for January 2026, which at nearly £17 billion is 69 per cent higher than receipts of just over £10 billion in January 2025.
January’s figure includes the payment of self-assessment bills for the 2024/25 tax year so it could reflect investors – from April 2024 – disposing of assets ahead of an expected rise in CGT rates that duly arrived at the October 2024 Budget.[1]
Don’t forget that many thought CGT rates were going up more than they did, with some Labour MPs arguing for an equalisation with income tax rates, so a summer of ’24 firesale of assets could be behind this spike.
As the annual exemption had been slashed by the previous Government to a meagre £3,000 by April 2024 there was, and remains, little protection against CGT for investors selling assets, which will have turbo-charged the revenues from any pre-Budget disposals.
We will only know next year if this was a one-off boost from pre-October 2024 disposals, or whether investors continued afterwards to sell assets at the higher CGT rates, which took effect immediately.
With taxes on capital gains, investors tend either to bring forward decisions ahead of anticipated changes or to defer crystallising gains afterwards, or both.
Many might now be waiting for a future government to bring the CGT burden back down, others might be put off by the higher tax environment from setting up or investing in businesses in the first place. But all that will not be evident for some time.
The CGT take has revealed little or no boost to the Treasury coffers from the reduction of the annual exemption. Final revenue data shows that CGT brought in £16.93 billion in 2022/23, £14.50 billion in 2023/24 and just £13.06 billion in 2024/25, suggesting that many investors were reluctant to sell up with this diminished level of protection.[2]
[1] Rachel Reeves increased CGT rates with immediate effect on 30 October 2024 from 10% to 18% for basic rate taxpayers and 20% to 24% for those on the higher rates of tax. With the exception of non-exempt property disposals where taxable gains need to be reported and CGT paid within 60-days of completion, capital gains on other assets are typically disclosed via self-assessment and tend to lag longer in the data.
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk
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