HMRC's first dedicated crypto tax box: 17,600 filers, £1.38bn in gains, 240 millionaires

HM Revenue and Customs published statistics on Thursday showing that 17,600 individuals reported taxable cryptoasset capital gains for the 2024-25 UK tax year, declaring £13.8 billion ($18.76 billion) in disposal proceeds and £1.38 billion ($1.87 billion) in total gains. Of those, 240 people each reported gains above £1 million ($1.36 million), per HMRC's official statistics as reported by The Block.

The distribution is the number worth holding onto. That 240-person cohort — roughly 1.4% of filers — accounted for £717 million ($974 million), or about 52% of all declared crypto gains. The average across everyone else pulls down to £78,000 ($106,000) per person.

2024-25 was the first year Self Assessment returns carried a dedicated crypto capital gains section; previously the figures were folded into the general CGT pages. That makes this a baseline, not a trend line — there is no like-for-like prior year to compare it against.

Separately, accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young said in a report last week that HMRC sent 81,000 "nudge" letters to suspected underpayers over the past year, up about 25% from 65,000 the year before and up from 27,714 in 2023-24. Nudge letters invite voluntary disclosure ahead of a formal investigation.

The enforcement backdrop is the OECD's Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, which the UK began implementing in January 2026. HMRC expects to start receiving customer data from crypto asset service providers in 2027; UHY Hacker Young says automatic exchange covering UK residents at exchanges in 52 jurisdictions begins May 31, 2027, with 15 more jurisdictions in 2028. For the 2025-26 year, gains above the allowance must be reported and paid by Jan. 31, 2027.

Key facts

• 17,600 individuals reported crypto CGT disposals in 2024-25 — HMRC statistics, via The Block
• £13.8bn ($18.76bn) disposal proceeds; £1.38bn ($1.87bn) total gains — HMRC
• 240 individuals reported gains over £1m each, totalling £717m ($974m) — HMRC
• Average gain per filer: £78,000 ($106,000) — HMRC
• 81,000 nudge letters in the past year, vs 65,000 and 27,714 in the two prior years — UHY Hacker Young
• CARF data flows from CASPs begin 2027; 52 jurisdictions from May 31, 2027 — HMRC and UHY Hacker Young

The real-world read

The gap nobody is putting in a headline: HMRC sent 81,000 warning letters while only 17,600 people filed crypto gains. The populations and periods aren't identical and shouldn't be treated as a single ratio, but the direction is unmistakable — the tax authority believes far more people owe than have declared.

Discount the framing accordingly. UHY Hacker Young is an accountancy practice that sells voluntary-disclosure and tax-investigation work; its letter tallies are the firm's own count, not an HMRC publication, and its warning of a coming enforcement wave is also a pitch. HMRC, for its part, published what was declared — it said nothing about the compliance rate, the estimated shortfall, or how much tax was actually collected on that £1.38bn. The dollar figures are conversions at an unstated rate, internally consistent at roughly 1.36.

Note also that The Block discloses Foresight Ventures as its majority investor, with exchange Bitget an anchor LP in that fund.

Opinion, and whose

"Once HMRC has this data then tax investigations into cryptocurrency investors will be like shooting fish in a barrel," said Neela Chauhan, a partner at UHY Hacker Young, predicting HMRC could use basic AI tooling to assemble a comprehensive list of investors behind on CGT or income tax. The firm expects investigations to rise as overseas data arrives. That is a forecast from an interested party, not a stated HMRC plan.

Sources

• HMRC official statistics (primary) — filer counts, proceeds, gains, the millionaire cohort, and the new Self Assessment section.
• The Block, Brian Danga (Aug. 28, 2026) — reporting of the HMRC release and the summary of UHY Hacker Young's report. The Block discloses Foresight Ventures as majority investor; Bitget is an anchor LP in that fund.
• UHY Hacker Young report (published the prior week) — nudge-letter counts, CARF timetable detail, and the Chauhan quote. An interested commercial party in tax-compliance services; its estimates and forecasts are its own.

Not financial advice. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances — talk to a qualified adviser.