The capital gains tax allowance for 2022-23 was £12,300 for individuals. That was the amount of profit you could make from selling or disposing of assets during the tax year — 6 April 2022 to 5 April 2023 — before any CGT became due. Anything you didn’t use by 5 April 2023 was lost; the allowance did not carry forward.
Who Got the £12,300
The £12,300 annual exempt amount applied to individuals, personal representatives of someone who had died, and trustees for disabled people. Most other trustees received half that figure — £6,150.1HM Revenue & Customs. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances
Joint owners each had their own allowance. A married couple or civil partners selling a jointly held property could therefore shelter up to £24,600 of gain between them, so long as each held a share. Personal representatives dealing with an estate could claim the full individual allowance for disposals made in the year of death and the two tax years that followed.
The Rates Once You Went Over
Rates for 2022-23 depended on the asset type and on your income tax band. Residential property was taxed more heavily than other assets.
On most chargeable assets — shares, business assets, personal possessions:
- Basic rate taxpayers: 10%
- Higher and additional rate taxpayers: 20%
On residential property such as buy-to-lets, second homes, and holiday lets:
- Basic rate taxpayers: 18%
- Higher and additional rate taxpayers: 28%
Trustees paid a flat 20% on most gains and 28% on residential property gains.1HM Revenue & Customs. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances
Your band was worked out by stacking the taxable gain on top of your taxable income for the year. A large gain can push a basic rate taxpayer over the threshold, so part of the profit ends up taxed at the higher rate. It catches people out.
What Counted as a Disposal
CGT applied to a broad group of chargeable assets:
- Property — second homes, buy-to-lets, holiday homes, and land. Your main home was usually exempt.
- Shares and investments, unless held inside an ISA or PEP.2GOV.UK. Capital Gains Manual – CG57600
- Personal possessions worth £6,000 or more at disposal, such as jewellery, art, and antiques. Private cars were exempt.3GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax on Personal Possessions – What You Pay It On
- Business assets — land, buildings, equipment, and goodwill.
A disposal was not only a sale. Gifting an asset, swapping it for something else, or receiving an insurance payout for something lost or destroyed all counted. When no money changed hands — for example a property transferred to a family member — HMRC used the market value at the time of transfer as the sale price.4GOV.UK. Capital Gains Manual – CG12700
Working Out the Taxable Gain
The calculation was: sale price (or market value if gifted), minus what you originally paid, minus allowable costs, minus any losses, minus the £12,300 exempt amount. What was left was the taxable gain.
Allowable costs included stamp duty, solicitor fees, estate agent fees, and valuation costs. You could also deduct the cost of improvements that added value, such as an extension. Routine maintenance and repairs did not qualify. Replacing a broken boiler is maintenance; adding a new room is an improvement.
Using Losses
Losses on disposals in 2022-23 were deducted automatically from gains in the same year. If gains still exceeded £12,300 after applying current-year losses, you could then bring in unused losses carried forward from earlier years to reduce the gain down to the exempt amount.5GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – Losses
The ordering rule matters. Current-year losses have to be applied first, even if that pulls the gain below £12,300 and effectively wastes part of the allowance. Carried-forward losses only need to be used to the point that the gain reaches the exempt amount; you keep the rest for later years. You had up to four years after the end of the tax year to report a loss to HMRC.5GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – Losses
Reliefs That Could Cut or Remove the Bill
Alongside the £12,300 exempt amount, several reliefs could reduce or wipe out a 2022-23 CGT liability.
Private Residence Relief
Most people used this without noticing. No CGT was due on selling your home if you lived in it as your main residence the whole time you owned it, did not let part of it out (a lodger was fine), did not use any part exclusively for business, and the grounds were under 5,000 square metres.6GOV.UK. Tax When You Sell Your Home – Private Residence Relief
Where the property was your main home for only part of the ownership period, the relief was proportional. The final nine months of ownership always counted as occupation, giving some room to buy a new home before the old one sold.
Business Asset Disposal Relief
Formerly Entrepreneurs’ Relief, this cut the CGT rate to 10% on qualifying business gains up to a lifetime limit of £1 million. You generally had to have been a sole trader, business partner, or company officer holding at least 5% of the shares for at least two years before disposal.1HM Revenue & Customs. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances
Other Reliefs
Gift Hold-Over Relief let you defer CGT when gifting qualifying assets, with the recipient taking on your original cost base instead of the market value at the time of the gift. Rollover Relief deferred a gain when you sold a business asset and reinvested the proceeds into another. Investors’ Relief gave a 10% rate on qualifying shares in unlisted trading companies, with its own separate lifetime limit.
Reporting and Paying
How you reported depended on what you sold.
For UK residential property, CGT had to be reported and paid within 60 days of completion, through HMRC’s “Capital Gains Tax on UK property account.”7GOV.UK. Report and Pay Your Capital Gains Tax Miss that 60-day window and automatic penalties and interest follow. The gain also had to appear on your Self Assessment return for the year, but the tax itself was due within the 60 days.
For everything else — shares, personal possessions, business assets — gains went through your Self Assessment return. The online filing deadline for 2022-23 was 31 January 2024, with payment due the same day.8GOV.UK. Self Assessment Tax Returns – Deadlines
Records to Keep
For each asset you needed the date of acquisition, purchase price, costs of buying and selling, any improvement spend, the date of disposal, and the sale price or market value.
Non-business taxpayers who filed Self Assessment on time had to keep records for at least 22 months after the end of the tax year — for 2022-23, that meant retaining them until at least 31 January 2025.9GOV.UK. Keeping Your Pay and Tax Records – How Long to Keep Your Records Self-employed people had to keep theirs for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline for the relevant tax year.10GOV.UK. Business Records if You’re Self-Employed – How Long to Keep Your Records
Records of losses from earlier years are worth keeping indefinitely. Carried-forward losses have no expiry date.
What Changed After 2022-23
2022-23 was the last year at £12,300. The annual exempt amount fell to £6,000 for 2023-24 and to £3,000 from 2024-25 onward, with the trust figure falling in step to £3,000 and then £1,500.1HM Revenue & Customs. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances
If you’re looking back at a 2022-23 disposal that has not yet been reported, the £12,300 allowance still applies to gains realised in that tax year. Late filing penalties and interest may apply if the relevant deadlines have already passed.