Capital gains tax has been rewritten in stages since October 2024, and the last of the announced changes landed on 6 April 2026. The main rates are now 18% and 24%, business asset disposal relief has finished its climb to 18%, and the annual exempt amount stays at £3,000. Carried interest has left the capital gains code altogether.
The main rates
For 2026/27 an individual pays 18% on gains falling in the basic rate band and 24% above it. Those rates took effect on 30 October 2024, when the old 10% and 20% rates were raised to match the rates that already applied to residential property.
That matching is the point most often missed. There is no longer a separate, higher rate for residential property gains — the general rates were raised to the residential ones rather than the other way round. HMRC's rates table stopped showing a separate residential line for individuals and trustees from that date.
Trustees and personal representatives pay 24%, also from 30 October 2024, up from 20%.
Allowances
The annual exempt amount for 2026/27 is £3,000 for individuals and personal representatives, and £1,500 for most trustees. Both are unchanged from 2025/26 and 2024/25.
It is worth remembering how far this has fallen. An allowance that covered a reasonable amount of ordinary portfolio activity now covers very little, which is why gains that never used to be reportable increasingly are — and why the discipline of using the allowance each year, where there is a genuine reason to realise, matters more than it did.
Business asset disposal relief and investors' relief
BADR has finished a three-step climb. The rate was 10%, rose to 14% for disposals on or after 6 April 2025, and rose again to 18% for disposals on or after 6 April 2026. The lifetime limit remains £1 million, where it has sat since 11 March 2020.
Investors' relief has followed the same rate path — 10%, then 14%, now 18% — but its lifetime limit was cut far more sharply, from £10 million to £1 million for qualifying disposals on or after 30 October 2024.
At 18%, BADR's advantage over the main 24% rate is six percentage points, worth up to £60,000 across a full £1m lifetime limit. That is still real money, but it is a long way from the relief people remember, and it no longer justifies contorting a transaction. The conditions — and the traps in the 5% test — are covered in our guide to capital gains tax reliefs.
Reporting: the 60-day rule
Any capital gains tax due on a disposal of UK residential property must be reported and paid within 60 days of completion. The clock runs from completion, not exchange, and late filing attracts penalties and interest in the ordinary way.
Non-residents have a wider obligation: they must report all disposals of UK property or land, residential and non-residential, within the deadline — and they must do so even where there is no tax to pay. A nil liability does not remove the filing requirement, which is the single most common reason overseas sellers pick up penalties. Our guide to reporting capital gains on UK property sets out the mechanics.
Carried interest has left CGT
Carried interest had its own capital gains rate of 32% for gains arising on or after 6 April 2025. From 6 April 2026 it sits outside the capital gains code entirely: it is treated as the profit of a deemed trade, subject to income tax and Class 4 National Insurance, with a 72.5% multiplier applied to the qualifying part. HMRC's rates table shows no carried interest line from that date. Our guide to carried interest covers the new regime.
Other changes worth knowing
- Employee ownership trusts — relief on a qualifying disposal to an EOT was cut from 100% to 50% of the gain, effective 26 November 2025. Anyone modelling an EOT sale on the old basis is modelling the wrong number;
- Share exchanges and reorganisations — the anti-avoidance rules were modernised, also with effect from 26 November 2025;
- Non-resident capital gains administration — changes took effect on 1 April 2026 for companies and 6 April 2026 for individuals;
- Incorporation relief — for transfers of a business on or after 6 April 2026, relief under section 162 must be claimed rather than applying automatically, and the section 162A election has been repealed.
What is not changing
This is worth stating plainly, because speculation fills the gap. As at autumn 2026 there is no announced-but-unimplemented change to the main capital gains rates, the annual exempt amount, or the BADR and investors' relief rates. The 18%/24% structure and the £3,000 allowance are the current position, and nothing in the last Budget's published legislation changes them.
That means the planning question is the ordinary one: timing, use of the annual exempt amount, spouse transfers, loss relief, and whether a relief applies — not whether to rush a transaction ahead of a rumoured increase.
What to do about it
Three practical points. Check the rate that applied at the date of disposal, not the date of the return, because several of these changes are mid-year and the wrong-rate error is easy to make. Confirm whether a relief is time-tested — BADR conditions run for two years before disposal, so they are lost long before anyone notices. And diarise the 60-day deadline at the point a property sale is agreed, not at completion.
Acumon advises on disposals, reliefs and reporting through capital gains tax and private client tax work, with tax planning where a transaction is still being shaped. If a sale is planned for this tax year, the relief conditions are the thing to test first — they are the part that cannot be fixed later.