How much is the Capital Gains Tax on shares?

We've updated this guide on 5th March 2021

How much Capital Gains Tax you pay when selling company shares or share options for a profit depends on:

I am selling shares from an ISA

Simple. There is no tax to pay if your annual contributions to your ISA stayed in the £20k limit.

In this case the calculation is straightforward as well:

Use our Capital Gains Tax calculator to work out how much you need to pay.

EIS and SEIS: as long as you held them for the required time, there is zero Capital Gains Tax to pay
VCTs: there’s no holding time period to benefit of this zero CGT rule.

It all depends on your relationship to your employer:

Type of shares	How you received them	Capital Gains Tax
your company’s common shares	you owned at least £2,000 worth of shares in your company	you only pay CGT on gains over £100,000 that you make during your lifetime
your company’s common shares	you owned at least 5% of the company	you might qualify for Entrepreneurs’ Relief and pay CGT at a reduced rate of 10%
your company’s common shares	through a Share Incentive Plan (SIP)	—
your or other companies’ publicly listed shares	through a Save As You Earn (SAYE) plan	—
your company’s share options	through a Share Option Plan	normal rate (on the difference between the exercise price and what you sold them for)
your company’s share options	through an Enterprise Management Incentive Plan (EMI)	normal rate (on the difference between the exercise price and what you sold them for)

If the person giving you the shares was your spouse, then you don’t need to do anything.

Otherwise you need to calculate and pay CGT.

If you made a capital loss when selling shares, you can:

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