Last updated on 18 August 2026
The non-dom crypto tax in the UK has changed fundamentally from April 2025. The old remittance basis is gone. If you are a non-domiciled individual holding or trading crypto, your overseas gains can now be taxed in the UK.
This is a complete rethink of how the UK taxes people who live here but call somewhere else home. The government has been signalling this for a while, but now it is real, and the tax year has already started.
If you have been sitting on crypto gains abroad and assuming they are safely out of HMRC’s reach because you are a non-dom, that assumption no longer holds.
First, What Actually is a Non-Dom?
A non-domiciled person, or non-dom, is someone who lives in the UK but whose permanent home, their domicile, is legally considered to be in another country.
It is a specific legal concept, and it has historically come with some tax advantages.
Say you were born in Lebanon, you moved to London twelve years ago for work, and you still consider Beirut your real home in a legal sense. Under the old rules, you were a non-dom. And being a non-dom meant you could use something called the remittance basis.
The remittance basis meant you only paid UK tax on money you actually brought into the UK. So if your crypto profits stayed in an overseas exchange or wallet, HMRC could not touch them. That was the deal.
And for many non-doms with significant overseas crypto holdings, it was a genuinely valuable arrangement.
That deal is now over.
What Changed from 6 April 2025?
The government abolished the remittance basis entirely. Starting 6 April 2025, it no longer exists as a tax option.
In its place is a new system built around something called the Foreign Income and Gains exemption, or FIG for short.
The Foreign Income and Gains Exemption
The FIG exemption is available to people who are UK tax residents for the first time, or who have not been UK tax residents for the previous ten years. If you qualify, you get a four-year window where your foreign income and gains, including overseas crypto gains, are not subject to UK tax.
Four years sounds reasonable. But there is a catch. You have to actively claim the FIG exemption on your Self Assessment return each year. It does not happen automatically. Miss the claim, and HMRC will tax your worldwide income from day one as if you never qualified for it at all.
And when those four years are up, everything changes again. From year five onwards, all your income and gains from anywhere in the world are fully taxable in the UK. Including every bit of crypto you hold overseas.
To put it in real terms: if you moved to the UK in April 2022 and you have never been a UK resident before, your four-year FIG window closes in April 2026. After that, selling Bitcoin in Singapore, Ethereum in Dubai, or anything else abroad will trigger a UK tax liability.
How Does the UK Tax Crypto in General?
HMRC treats cryptocurrency as a capital asset, similar to shares or property. So every time you sell crypto, swap one coin for another, or gift it to someone, you create a taxable event. The gain is simply what you received minus what you originally paid.
Following the October 2024 Budget, Capital Gains Tax rates on crypto are now 18% for basic rate taxpayers and 24% for higher and additional rate taxpayers.
The annual CGT allowance, which is the amount you can gain before tax kicks in, has been cut to just 3,000 GBP per year.
That is a MAJOR reduction from where it was a few years ago.
If you earn crypto rather than simply holding it, the rules are different. Staking rewards, mining income, and crypto received as pay are all treated as income. Income Tax applies at rates of up to 45% for the highest earners.
This is why working with a crypto tax accountant who understands both the capital and income sides of crypto is so important; getting these categories mixed up can lead to serious errors on your return.
What This Actually Means if You Are a Non-Dom with Crypto?
The impact depends a lot on when you arrived in the UK and how you have been managing your tax position.
If You Were Already Here Before April 2025
If you were already claiming the remittance basis before 6 April 2025, you have lost that protection. But the government did introduce a transitional relief to soften the blow.
For the 2025 to 2026 tax year, you can elect to rebase your foreign assets, including crypto, to their market value as of 5 April 2019.
This means any gains you made before that date simply disappear from the UK tax calculation. Only gains made after the rebasing date become taxable.
If you bought Bitcoin in 2016 at a few hundred pounds and it ran up massively by 2019, rebasing wipes out that early growth from HMRC’s view. This can be a huge saving. But the election has to be made correctly and at the right time.
This is exactly the kind of decision where the best crypto accountant in the UK can make a real difference to your actual tax bill.
If You Arrived in the UK After 6 April 2025
You come in under the new FIG exemption regime from the start. Assuming you qualify, meaning you have not been a UK tax resident in the past ten years, your foreign crypto gains are protected for four years.
But you need to claim it every year.
And you need to track exactly when your four years run out. Missing that deadline or getting the dates wrong is a costly mistake. Keep records from day one of your UK residency.
The Temporary Repatriation Facility: Time-Sensitive and Worth Knowing About
The Temporary Repatriation Facility, or TRF, allows former remittance basis users to bring old unremitted foreign gains into the UK at a reduced flat tax rate.
Instead of paying up to 24% CGT on those gains when you eventually use them, you can designate them under the TRF. You will pay just 12% in the 2025 to 2026 and 2026 to 2027 tax years. That rate rises to 15% in 2027 to 2028, and then the facility closes entirely.
If you built up years of crypto gains abroad while using the remittance basis, this is your window to settle at a lower rate.
Once April 2028 arrives, that option is gone.
A good crypto tax accountant can help you calculate whether using the TRF makes sense for your specific position.
Inheritance Tax: The Part Most People Overlook
The non-dom reforms do not stop at income and crypto capital gains. They also overhauled the Inheritance Tax.
Previously, non-doms were only subject to UK Inheritance Tax on assets located in the UK.
Your crypto holdings on an overseas exchange?
Out of scope. Not anymore.
The new system introduces a long-term residence test. If you have been a UK tax resident for ten or more years, your worldwide assets, including all crypto wherever it is held, come into the UK IHT net.
And here is the part that surprises most people: this IHT exposure continues for ten years after you leave the UK. So moving abroad does not immediately fix the problem.
Crypto assets are already tricky from an IHT planning perspective because of their volatility and the way they are held. The new rules make this even more complex.
Overseas Workday Relief: What Has Changed Here
If you are a non-dom who works partly in the UK and partly abroad, Overseas Workday Relief, or OWR, lets you reduce the UK tax on the portion of your earnings that relate to overseas work.
The relief still exists under the new rules, but it has been updated.
Under the old rules, you had to keep the relevant employment income offshore to qualify. Under the new rules, you do not.
You can bring the money into the UK and still claim the relief, as long as the income genuinely relates to days worked outside the UK. The relief is available for your first four years of UK residence, which aligns with the FIG exemption window.
For non-doms who also receive crypto as part of their employment, understanding how OWR interacts with their crypto income is genuinely complicated. This is not something to work out alone.
Need Help with Non-Dom Crypto Tax? Talk to a Specialist!
The changes to non-dom crypto tax are significant, time-sensitive, and genuinely complex. The Temporary Repatriation Facility closes in 2028. The rebasing election only applies for the 2025 to 2026 tax year. And the FIG exemption has to be claimed annually or you lose it.
These are not the kind of details you want to get wrong. And they are not the kind of details a general accountant will necessarily know inside out.
At Crypto Accountants, we work with people in your position, non-doms, overseas investors, and UK residents with complex portfolios.
Book a consultation and we will review your residence status, assess how the April 2025 non-dom changes affect your crypto gains. Then, we will determine whether you qualify for the FIG regime, rebasing election, or Temporary Repatriation Facility, identify any HMRC risks, and build a clear, forward-looking tax strategy to your portfolio.
