The Capital Gains Tax allowance for 2023/24 was £6,000 per individual, covering the tax year from 6 April 2023 to 5 April 2024.1GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances That was half the £12,300 allowance available the year before. Any net gains above £6,000 were taxed at between 10% and 28%, depending on the asset and your income.
How the £6,000 Allowance Worked
The Annual Exempt Amount is a single tax-free bucket for the whole tax year, not a per-transaction figure. You add up every gain you made from disposals during 2023/24, subtract any allowable losses from the same year, and pay CGT only on what remains above £6,000. Sell several assets with combined net gains of £8,000 and you owed tax on £2,000.
A disposal covers more than a straight sale. Giving an asset away, swapping it, or receiving compensation when something is destroyed all count. In practice the most common taxable disposals are second homes and buy-to-let property, shares and funds held outside an ISA, and personal possessions worth £6,000 or more (your car aside).2GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – What You Pay It On The gain is the sale price minus the original cost, minus allowable expenses such as solicitor fees, stamp duty paid on purchase, and improvement costs. Routine maintenance doesn’t count.
The allowance is use-it-or-lose-it. Make no disposals in 2023/24 and that year’s £6,000 is gone. It cannot be carried forward or pooled with a later year’s figure. That is why spreading a large disposal across two tax years, where the timing allowed it, could shelter more of the gain.
What Sits Outside CGT Entirely
Some assets never touch your allowance because gains on them are outside CGT altogether. Anything held inside an ISA, pension, or PEP is tax-free, as are UK government gilts, Premium Bonds, and gambling or lottery winnings.2GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – What You Pay It On
Your main home is normally covered by Private Residence Relief if you lived in it as your only home throughout ownership, didn’t let out part of it (a lodger is fine), didn’t use any part exclusively for business, and the grounds are under 5,000 square metres.3GOV.UK. Tax When You Sell Your Home – Private Residence Relief Cars are exempt whatever their value, and personal possessions sold for less than £6,000 each fall outside CGT.
The Rates That Applied Above £6,000
Once your gains cleared the allowance, the rate depended on the asset and on your income band for the year.1GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances
- Shares and other non-property assets: 10% for basic-rate taxpayers, 20% for higher or additional-rate taxpayers.
- Residential property that wasn’t your main home: 18% for basic-rate taxpayers, 28% for higher or additional-rate taxpayers.
- Trustees and personal representatives: 20% on non-property gains, 28% on residential property gains.
Gains stack on top of your income for the purpose of finding the rate. If you earned £40,000 in salary during 2023/24, the basic-rate band ran to £50,270, leaving £10,270 of headroom. A gain fitting inside that headroom was taxed at the lower rate; anything spilling above it hit the higher rate. Missing this stacking effect is a common reason people underestimate what they owe.
Different Allowances for Trustees and Estates
Trustees of a settlement had a smaller Annual Exempt Amount of £3,000 for 2023/24, exactly half the individual figure.1GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances Trusts for vulnerable beneficiaries, such as a disabled person or a bereaved minor, kept the full £6,000. Bare trusts don’t follow the trust rules at all: the beneficiary is treated as the owner for tax, so they use their own £6,000 allowance.4GOV.UK. Trusts and Capital Gains Tax
Personal representatives dealing with a deceased person’s estate could claim the full £6,000 individual allowance on estate disposals. That applied for the tax year of the death and the two following tax years.5GOV.UK. HS282 Death, Personal Representatives and Legatees Beyond that three-year window the estate loses AEA entirely, so wrapping up asset sales during administration matters.
Doubling the Allowance Between Spouses
Married couples and civil partners living together can transfer assets between themselves on a no-gain, no-loss basis, so no CGT arises on the transfer itself.6GOV.UK. HS281 Capital Gains Tax Civil Partners and Spouses The receiving spouse takes on the original cost, so the gain is deferred rather than removed; when they later sell to a third party, CGT is calculated from the first purchase price.
The practical effect for 2023/24 was that a couple could shelter up to £12,000 of gains between them by using both £6,000 allowances. If one spouse held an asset with a large latent gain, transferring a portion to the other before the sale let both allowances soak up part of the profit. The transfer had to be complete before the sale to the third party for the planning to work.
Using Losses Against Your Gains
Losses realised in 2023/24 had to be set against gains from the same tax year first, whether you wanted to or not. Any loss left after that could be carried forward indefinitely.7GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – Losses Same-year losses are applied in full even if they drag your gains below £6,000, so they can waste part of the allowance. Losses brought forward from earlier years behave better: you only use enough of them to bring net gains down to the AEA, keeping the rest for future years.
Losses only count if you report them. HMRC has to be notified within four years of the end of the tax year in which the loss arose, so a 2023/24 loss must be claimed by 5 April 2028. Miss that and it is gone. You can report through Self Assessment or, if you don’t file a return, by writing to HMRC with the figures.
Business Asset Disposal Relief
Selling a business or qualifying shares during 2023/24 could bring the rate down to 10% under Business Asset Disposal Relief, subject to a £1 million lifetime cap on qualifying gains.8GOV.UK. Business Asset Disposal Relief Broadly, sole traders and partners needed to have owned the business for at least two years, and shareholders needed to have been an employee or officer holding at least 5% of shares and voting rights for the same period. The £1 million cap is cumulative across all claims you’ve ever made. For disposals after 5 April 2025 the BADR rate rose to 14%, so the 10% available in 2023/24 was the better deal.
Reporting Deadlines for 2023/24 Gains
UK residential property sales had their own fast track. You had to use HMRC’s online “Capital Gains Tax on UK property” service to report and pay within 60 days of completion.9GOV.UK. Report and Pay Your Capital Gains Tax – If You Sold a Property in the UK on or After 6 April 2020 Missing the 60 days triggered a £100 late-filing penalty, with more penalties at six and twelve months, plus interest on unpaid tax.
Other assets, including shares, funds, and valuable possessions, went through Self Assessment. The filing deadline for 2023/24 returns was 31 January 2025. You had to complete the Capital Gains Tax summary pages if your total gains before losses exceeded the £6,000 allowance, or if total disposal proceeds exceeded £50,000, even where no tax was due.10GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax – Work Out if You Need to Pay Below both thresholds, reporting usually wasn’t required.
A property gain already reported through the 60-day service still had to appear on your Self Assessment return for the year. Tax paid earlier is credited against the final liability, but the reporting obligation exists in both places. Keep purchase and sale contracts and receipts for improvement costs for as long as they might be needed to support the calculation; for assets held for many years that can mean well beyond the standard record-keeping period.
Where the Allowance Went Next
The £6,000 figure for 2023/24 was itself a stepping stone. From 6 April 2024 the individual Annual Exempt Amount fell to £3,000, with trustees dropping to £1,500, and £3,000 has stayed in place for 2025/26 and 2026/27.1GOV.UK. Capital Gains Tax Rates and Allowances From £12,300 in 2022/23 to £6,000 in 2023/24 to £3,000 in 2024/25, the allowance lost more than 75% of its value in two years. Anyone who postponed a disposal past 5 April 2024 hoping for a better window got a worse one.