Kraken reports to HMRC, and since 7 October 2026 it says so on its own support site in more detail than any UK exchange has before. Its UK Tax Reporting FAQ says Kraken may be required to give HMRC account and transaction information for individual clients covering the 2022 to 2023, 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 tax years, in response to a data-holder notice under Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011. That sits alongside the forward-looking regime, under which Kraken has collected UK customers’ tax details since 1 January 2026 and sends the first reports to HMRC by 31 May 2027. The figures below were read on GOV.UK, legislation.gov.uk and Kraken’s own pages on 16 October 2026.

The £5,000 is not what you made. It is how much moved, per coin, per direction, per year, and HMRC will set it against a return that may not exist.

What Kraken is sending HMRC about the last three tax years

Schedule 23 is HMRC’s data-gathering power. Paragraph 1 says an officer “may by notice in writing require a relevant data-holder to provide relevant data”, and the data can relate to particular persons and include names and addresses, per legislation.gov.uk. It is the same power HMRC has used on letting agents and payment processors for years. Kraken says the notice applies only to individual clients, not to company, trust or partnership accounts, and that what it may provide is the client’s name, address, email address, account identifier and aggregated activity.

The aggregation is where people will misread it. Kraken’s page says reporting is generally based on whether a client had £5,000 or more of activity for a particular crypto-asset or fiat currency and transaction type during a covered tax year. The eight transaction types are crypto to crypto in, crypto to crypto out, fiat to crypto in, crypto to fiat out, crypto transfer in, crypto transfer out, fiat transfer in and fiat transfer out. Each coin and each type is totalled separately. Kraken’s own worked table has £4,500 of BTC sold for fiat in 2022 to 2023 falling below the line and £5,250 of ETH sold for fiat in the same year going in, with £6,000 of BTC swapped into other coins in 2023 to 2024 and £7,500 of sterling deposited in 2024 to 2025 both reported.

Two sentences on that page deserve reading twice. “The threshold is based on aggregated transaction activity for a specific crypto-asset or currency and transaction type, not necessarily your taxable gain, profit, income, or account balance.” And “this means the threshold may be reached even if you did not make a profit, or even if your net gain was much lower than £5,000.” A year of selling £5,000 of SOL at a loss is reported. Staking rewards and airdrops are not reported at the point you receive them, but the later sale of those coins is counted like any other disposal. Kraken also says it cannot tell you whether your account was included, which means the sensible assumption for anyone who moved £5,000 of anything in those three years is that it was.

Does Kraken report to HMRC from 2026 as well

Yes, under a different law. Kraken serves UK customers through Payward Limited, registered with the FCA as a cryptoasset business with effect from 22 November 2021 under firm reference 928768, per its disclosures page. A UK registered provider is a reporting cryptoasset service provider under SI 2025/744, which came into force on 1 January 2026. GOV.UK’s guidance for users lists what you have to hand over, your full name, date of birth, the address and country where you normally live, your country of tax residence and your National Insurance number or Unique Taxpayer Reference. That is why Kraken has been asking for a tax identification number. Give inaccurate details or none and you could get a penalty of up to £300.

The first reports, covering the 2026 calendar year, must be with HMRC between 1 January and 31 May 2027, per the GOV.UK reporting guidance. Kraken’s CARF FAQ says it will not report individual transactions, it reports totals by asset, by direction and by type, which is the same shape as the Schedule 23 data. Kraken Pro is a trading interface on the same Payward Limited account, so the answer for Pro is the answer for Kraken. Our CARF guide covers what HMRC does with the feed and how it matches it against returns.

What you owe on Kraken trades

For 2026 to 2027 the annual exempt amount is £3,000 and gains above it are taxed at 18% inside your basic rate band and 24% above it, per GOV.UK. The three earlier years Kraken is reporting had their own allowances, £12,300 for 2022 to 2023, £6,000 for 2023 to 2024 and £3,000 for 2024 to 2025, so a year that looks taxable on Kraken’s totals may not have been.

A sale for pounds is one of four kinds of disposal. HMRC’s manual at CRYPTO22100 lists selling tokens for money, exchanging tokens for a different type of token, using tokens to pay for goods or services and giving tokens away. Every ETH to BTC trade on Kraken is a disposal of ETH at the sterling value of the BTC received, which is the point our guide to tax without selling exists for. Moving coins to your own hardware wallet is not a disposal, although Kraken counts the transfer towards the £5,000 line.

The cost HMRC sets against each disposal comes from the pooling rules at CRYPTO22200. A sale is matched first to coins bought the same day, then to coins bought in the following 30 days, then to the section 104 pool of everything else at average cost. Buy 1 BTC at £20,000, another at £30,000, and sell 1 BTC at £28,000. The pool holds 2 BTC at £50,000, an average of £25,000, so the gain is £3,000. Measured against the first purchase alone it would look like £8,000, and against the second like a £2,000 loss. Sell at a loss and buy back within 30 days and the loss is matched to the repurchase and vanishes. Trades in Kraken’s USD or EUR pairs are worked in sterling on the day of each leg, per CG78310.

Fees are the one place Kraken helps. The ledgers export records the fee on every trade, and HMRC’s manual at CRYPTO22150 allows the exchange fee on a purchase as part of the cost and the fee on a sale against the proceeds. A fee on a coin to coin swap is split half to each side. The fee for depositing or withdrawing sterling is not allowable, because sterling is not a chargeable asset.

Staking and rewards on Kraken for UK clients

Kraken’s reward products differ by country and the UK list is short. Its Bitcoin staking page says Babylon BTC staking is available in the United Kingdom and pays rewards in Babylon’s own token, BABY, while the BTC stays yours. Whatever the product, HMRC’s position at CRYPTO21200 is that the sterling value of tokens awarded, at the time of receipt, is taxable as miscellaneous income, and that value becomes your cost when you later sell them. A reward paid in a token you have never heard of still has a sterling value on the day it lands, and HMRC expects it on the return. Our staking guide works through the income side and the £1,000 trading and miscellaneous income allowance that can cover small amounts.

The export Kraken gives you and what it leaves out

Kraken does not produce a UK tax report or statement, and its FAQ says so. What it provides is an export. Sign in, open Documents from the profile menu, choose Create Export, and pick Trades or Ledgers with a start and end date, in CSV or PDF, per Kraken’s export guide. Trades shows each execution. Ledgers shows every balance change, including deposits, withdrawals and fees, which is the file a reconciliation needs. Requests take anywhere from a few minutes to a week and Kraken does not email you when the file is ready, so check the page. Pull the ledgers file for every tax year back to 2022 to 2023 now, because the years HMRC is asking about are the years you most need the evidence for.

Kraken’s own page lists what its data does not reflect. Your cost basis, your gains and losses, income from staking or airdrops, activity on other exchanges, self-custody wallets, transfers between wallets and UK pooling. Every one of those is something HMRC will expect your return to have handled. If coins left Kraken for a wallet and came back from another exchange, the cost travels with them and only a reconciliation across every platform recovers it, which is the work described on our reconciliation page and the record standard in our record keeping guide.

If those three years were never on a return

Two triggers decide whether a year needed reporting. Gains above the allowance after losses, and total proceeds above £50,000 in the year from 2023 to 2024 onwards even where the gains sit inside the allowance, per GOV.UK’s reporting page. An active Kraken account clears £50,000 of proceeds on churn alone. If a year is missing, HMRC’s cryptoasset disclosure service is the route, and it asks for four years where you took reasonable care, six where you did not and twenty where it was deliberate. Our disclosure guide covers the mechanics, and the time limits depend on which of those three descriptions fits.

The year that lost money matters as much. A loss is only usable if it is claimed within four years of the end of the tax year, per GOV.UK, so a 2022 to 2023 loss on Kraken has to be claimed by 5 April 2027 or it is gone. HMRC now holds the totals that show the year happened. It does not hold the loss, and it will not claim it for you.

Kraken questions

Does Kraken report to HMRC?

Yes. Kraken's UK tax reporting page, updated 7 October 2026, says it may be required to give HMRC individual clients' data for the 2022 to 2023, 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 tax years under a Schedule 23 notice. Separately, from 1 January 2026 it collects UK customers' details under the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework and sends the first reports by 31 May 2027.

Does Kraken Pro report to HMRC?

Kraken Pro is a trading interface on the same Payward Limited account, so the same reporting covers it. The data is aggregated by coin and by transaction type, whichever screen you traded on.

Why is Kraken asking for my National Insurance number?

Because UK cryptoasset service providers must collect a tax identification number from every user from 1 January 2026, and for a UK resident that is the National Insurance number or UTR. Giving inaccurate details or none carries a penalty of up to £300.

Does Kraken give a UK tax report?

No. Kraken says it does not provide a UK tax form or calculate your liability. It provides Trades and Ledgers exports in CSV or PDF from the Documents page, which you or your accountant turn into the figures.

Do I owe tax if Kraken reported me to HMRC?

Not necessarily. The £5,000 threshold measures activity and your gain is a separate calculation. You owe Capital Gains Tax only where your pooled gains across every platform exceed the allowance for that year, and income tax on rewards at their sterling value when received.

How much tax do I pay on Kraken gains?

For 2026 to 2027, gains above the £3,000 annual exempt amount are taxed at 18% in the basic rate band and 24% above it, after the same day, 30 day and section 104 pooling rules. Earlier years had larger allowances, £12,300 for 2022 to 2023 and £6,000 for 2023 to 2024.

Sources

Every figure on this page was checked against the source below on 16 October 2026.

1. UK Tax Reporting FAQs, prior tax years for individual clients. Kraken, checked 16 October 2026
2. OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework FAQs. Kraken, checked 16 October 2026
3. How to export your account history. Kraken, checked 16 October 2026
4. Overview of Bitcoin staking on Kraken. Kraken, checked 16 October 2026
5. Disclosures, United Kingdom. Kraken, checked 16 October 2026
6. Finance Act 2011, Schedule 23, data-gathering powers. legislation.gov.uk, checked 16 October 2026
7. The Reporting Cryptoasset Service Providers (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2025. legislation.gov.uk, checked 16 October 2026
8. Information you need to give to UK cryptoasset service providers. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
9. Reporting cryptoasset user and transaction data. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
10. Capital Gains Tax rates. GOV.UK, checked 16 October 2026
11. CRYPTO22100, what is a disposal. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
12. CRYPTO22200, pooling. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
13. CRYPTO22150, allowable expenses. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
14. CRYPTO21200, staking. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
15. Tell HMRC about unpaid tax on cryptoassets. HM Revenue and Customs, checked 16 October 2026
16. Capital Gains Tax, losses. GOV.UK, checked 16 October 2026

Fahad Zar

Crypto tax accountantAAT licensed 1010475

• AAT Licensed Accountant and MAAT, licence 1010475
• MSc Accounting and Finance, BPP University London
• Six years inside digital asset accounting, across several crypto tax firms
• Practises through Zar Enterprises Ltd, ICO registration ZC225094
• Supervised for anti-money laundering by the AAT

What matters to me is that the number on the return is true, whatever it turns out to be.

Whether this is worth a conversation

Where this stops being a reading job and starts being a hiring one.

• You traded on Kraken in any of the three reported years and at least one of them was never on a return
• Coins moved between Kraken, other exchanges and your own wallets and nobody has carried the cost across
• You received a Kraken notification about UK tax reporting and want to know your actual position before HMRC writes

If every Kraken year is already on a return built from a full reconciliation, there is nothing in the notice that changes your position.

If one of these is you, the first look costs nothing.

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