Trading 212 Capital Gains Tax UK — How to Calculate and Report Your CGT

Trading 212 is one of the most popular investment apps in the UK, but it doesn’t calculate your Capital Gains Tax for you. That’s your responsibility. Here’s how to go from your Trading 212 account to a completed SA108.

GIA vs ISA — which trades count?

This is the first thing to check. Trading 212 offers two types of account:

Stocks and Shares ISA: Completely exempt from CGT. You don’t report any gains or losses from your ISA. Don’t include ISA trades in your CGT calculation.

General Investment Account (GIA): This is a taxable account. All gains from selling shares in your GIA are potentially subject to CGT.

If you have both, make sure you’re only exporting and calculating from your GIA.

Exporting your transaction history

Log in to Trading 212 → go to your portfolio → click the menu → Statements/History → download your transaction history as CSV.

Trading 212 limits exports to 1-year periods. If your trading spans multiple years, you’ll need to download multiple files and combine them (or upload them all to a calculator).

The CSV includes columns for: time, action (buy/sell), ticker, number of shares, price per share, and total amount in your account currency. Trading 212 helpfully provides amounts directly in GBP if your account is GBP-denominated.

GBP amounts — a nice simplification

Unlike Robinhood (which gives everything in USD), Trading 212’s GBP account provides GBP amounts directly. This means you don’t need to worry about HMRC exchange rates for most trades — the GBP figure on the statement is your cost or proceeds.

However, if you’re checking the numbers, be aware that Trading 212 applies their own FX rate at the time of trade. This may differ slightly from HMRC’s monthly rate. For most people, using Trading 212’s GBP figures is acceptable and consistent.

Common Trading 212 quirks

Fractional shares: Trading 212 supports fractional share purchases. These are treated the same as whole shares for CGT — they go into the Section 104 pool at their cost.

Free shares (referral bonuses): If you received free shares through Trading 212’s referral programme, these have a cost basis of £0 (or whatever market value they were allocated at). The full sale proceeds would be a gain.

Auto-invest/pie features: Automatic investments still count as individual purchases for CGT purposes. Each auto-invest creates a new entry in your Section 104 pool.

Stock splits: Trading 212 adjusts your holdings automatically for splits, but the CGT calculation needs the original pre-split quantities and prices. If you see odd quantities after a split, that’s why.

Calculating your CGT

Once you have your CSV export, the process is the same as any other broker. Apply HMRC’s three matching rules in order: same-day, 30-day, Section 104 pool. Account for any fees (Trading 212’s commission-free model means fees are minimal, but stamp duty of 0.5% applies on UK share purchases and the FX fee applies on non-GBP trades).

Upload your Trading 212 CSV to TaxBull — it auto-detects the Trading 212 format and handles the GBP amounts directly. You can combine it with CSVs from other brokers in the same calculation.

This guide is for informational purposes only. Verify your figures with a qualified accountant before filing.