Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Official Podcast of the Dentists Who Invest platform. Talking all things investing, money and finance with a dental spin. Have you ever wondered how you can grow your wealth and protect your hard earned money as a Dentist? We've got you covered. Featuring famous guests such as Andrew Craig, Edward Zuckerberg and Benyamin Ahmed we delve deep into EVERY aspect of finance to educate and empower ALL Dentists.
Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Got Crypto? Listen To This To Make Sure You Don't Break Any Tax Rules with Emily Bingham
Get a free audit of your indemnity cover here >>> https://quote.allmedpro.co.uk/dental-indemnity-2025-new-proposal-dwi/
———————————————————————
Collect unlimited free verifiable CPD for UK Dentists here >>>
———————————————————————
We've brought in crypto-specialist accountant Emily from Alexander & Co to demystify the complex world of cryptocurrency taxation specifically for dental professionals. This comprehensive guide walks you through everything from basic capital gains calculations to the nuanced tax implications of staking rewards and stable coin investments. With capital gains tax rates now at 18% for basic rate taxpayers and 24% for higher rate taxpayers, getting this right is essential for your financial wellbeing.
The conversation reveals several potential pitfalls that catch many dentists by surprise. Did you know that the "30-day rule" could create tax liabilities even when you believe you've made losses? Or that staking rewards are subject not only to income tax at your marginal rate but also to student loan repayments? For higher-rate taxpayers with outstanding student loans, this means nearly half of your staking rewards could be claimed by HMRC and the Student Loans Company combined.
Looking ahead, we explore the seismic shift coming in January 2026 when the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework makes it mandatory for exchanges to share your data with tax authorities. With 52 countries already committed to this global initiative, the window for getting your crypto tax affairs in order is closing. Emily shares practical advice on voluntary disclosure and how to minimize penalties if you haven't been fully compliant.
Don't miss this opportunity to claim free verifiable CPD by completing the short questionnaire linked in the description. Equip yourself with the knowledge to confidently manage your crypto investments while staying firmly on the right side of HMRC regulations.
———————————————————————
Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. Investment figures quoted refer to simulated past performance and that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results/performance.
HMRC are clamping down on crypto whenever it comes to our tax affairs.
Dr James:So, in order to prevent running afoul of this, we need to equip ourselves with the knowledge needed to stay on the right side of the law, and that's why I'm joined today by a crypto expert accountant who also deals with dentists, and we're going to be getting into the ins and outs what you need to know how crypto is taxed and how to stay on the right side of the rules.
Dr James:I'm also happy to share that there is free verifiable CPD associated with this podcast episode. Whenever you finish the episode, all you have to do is click the link in the podcast description. It'll take you right through to the Dentists Who Invest website. You'll be able to complete a short questionnaire and, once passed, you fill in your reflections and we'll go ahead and email over to you your verifiable CPD certificate, which is entirely free. What that means is this podcast episode will be able to contribute towards your verifiable CPD hours during this learning cycle. During this learning cycle, we need to talk about not just crypto, but specifically the taxation aspect of crypto, because it's been so long since I've done a podcast on this, emily, do you think a good place to start would be just to simply state how crypto is usually taxed in the UK. Is it any different from other assets?
Emily:Yeah, absolutely. State how crypto is usually taxed in the uk. Is it any different from other assets? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, in general, crypto is taxed based on existing legislation. So they've not kind of released any legislation that is specific to crypto, uh, which did make it quite complicated initially because they all they had to fit something that was pretty complicated into existing rules, uh, which, yeah, makes it a bit of a nightmare. But essentially how it works is if you sort of trade one crypto for another or cash out into your bank account, there may be a capital gain there, so it's taxed on the capital gains tax where you've got to swap, so capital gains tax the rates they were previously 10 and 20 percent, they're now 18 and 24 percent and it's based on any, basically any, profit you've made.
Emily:Now the actual calculation is pretty complicated because it follows the share legislation. So, um, what it means is you may think that you've made a loss, for example, when in fact, for tax purposes, you've made a loss, for example, when, in fact, for tax purposes, you've made a profit. So we found a lot of people have been completely thrown off by the rules. Luckily, there's some great tax calculators out there which help you to see how it's been calculated. So we often use Coinly, which is kind of the biggest one. There's a crypto tax calculator, which is also pretty useful, where you can just kind of link everything up. So that's a big one. The capital gains tax Also some elements of tax under income tax. So things like staking sometimes airdrops, depending on what they are those tend to be taxed under income tax as other income, so you'll pay the usual income tax rates on those, but you don't have to pay any national insurance.
Dr James:So it's just classed as other income on your tax return. There we go. Okay, I've written on that one, and that's presuming that it's all in per. Just to really spell this out, that presumes that, uh, it's all in a personal name, right, and if it's in a company, obviously it would be well it'd be corporation tax if it was in a company.
Dr James:Yeah yeah, because I remember and this is, this is one for the audience right here I remember one year oh, I can't remember what year it was, in fact, I think it was. I can't remember, anyway, it doesn't matter and I was like, okay, cool, I can sell 10,000 of crypto, whatever the old limit was CGT limit, right. And I was like, oh, you sell 10,000, right, and you're fine because you made 10,000 profit that year, but it doesn't work like that, right? You have to know the amount of crypto you originally had and the ratio of. You'll probably explain it better than me. How does it work?
Emily:Yeah. So if you say, bought a load of crypto in the past and then you've sold it today and then you're not planning on making any more sales in the next 30 days, is how you'd expect to be taxed. It would be what you've received for the sale of it all, less what you paid for it. What gets more complicated is if there's any transactions within 30 days of you selling it, because essentially you are deemed to have re-bought the same asset. So you may then not have a gain when you thought you previously would have done so. It almost takes a future purchase as the cost rather than a previous one. So that's where it can get very complicated. And also, if you've received staking income, for example in the same currency, then it'll take the market value on the date you receive it and it will tax that under income tax, but that will also be your cost base for when you then sell it. So that is really catching a lot of people out, because they'll receive the income be taxed when it's worth a certain amount. If that value then falls and they haven't sold it, they're basically going to be selling it when it's worth less and they've had to pay tax when it's worth way more, so it's it can really kind of it's it's.
Emily:I've seen a lot of people getting caught out by it. So I always tell people you should cash out the tax element if you ever receive any income, also if you're making any any sort of disposals in general. Because you have to pay your tax in pounds. You can't pay in crypto, so you need to get the money. Have to pay your tax in pounds. You can't pay it in crypto, so you need to get the money out to pay it. So don't just leave it in there thinking, oh, it might go up again, like you need to pay the tax, so you should get it out, so that's kind of why I always recommend, yeah, 100%, because that can massively catch people out, especially if they sell and then they buy back in and then the value goes down.
Dr James:You're reliable, buy back in and then the value goes down. You're at, you're liable on a uh, a great deal, or potentially a great deal of tax with money that you may not have liquid and you might find yourself selling a lot of your crypto because obviously it's went down, so, unfortunately, you need to sell more to get the same flipping money out. Watch out for that one, guys, anyway. Um, so yeah, we've covered how crypto works in relatively simple situations, as in when we're just buying and selling Bitcoin or some of the altcoins as well, because, it's well, they're all taxed in the same way, in that sense, when you're buying and selling.
Dr James:Of course, this is one to watch out for for the traders in the audience, because you just have so many transactions flying around and they're really hard to keep on top of. You mentioned coinly just a second ago, back when I used to use uh how can we say this? Uh apps and calculators for the tax side of things. They were really, really, really. Not that they were quite primitive, let's just say that and they didn't really work that well. So you you advocate nowadays that that's the best way to do it.
Emily:I know we've named coinly, but some sort of crypto tax calculator I mean when the number of traction transactions involved it's borderline, impossible to do it manually. You need to use some sort of software for it. So coinly has it's definitely improved a lot since it first kind of instead, we've used it for years now um, and we've, we kind of we're in communications with them and if there's any ever any issues, we kind of we've used it for years now and we're kind of wearing communications with them and if there's ever any issues, we kind of communicate that back. So they're always looking to improve things and we just find it's good because you can link your wallets with an API and pull everything in. So you've got all the data there. What it's not always perfect at is like tracking it correctly, getting the right tags on things, matching up lines.
Emily:So we always will do a review of someone's account before we put anything into a return, which is something I think a lot of accountants aren't doing because they're just relying on it because of the lack of knowledge around it. So we have a team that will actually look through the account and ask you questions if there's anything that looks like it's sticking out. And I've dealt with some HMRC inquiries and found HMRC are asking for the Coily reports. They're asking for the supporting data, so they will be looking for the same things we are. So we're hoping to kind of address the issues before they even get to HMRC. So if they do ask any questions, we've already got the answers.
Dr James:UK dentists. If you are just starting out on your investment journey or you're already investing and want to know if your strategy is 100% foolproof and optimized to reduce fees and maximize growth, then you might like to know. I have teamed up with independent financial planner, luke hurley, to create the dentistry invest academy. Dentists Who invest academy fully documents the process that a financial planner would normally perform for a client behind the scenes and reveals it to you. This means that you can implement it into your own life, therefore pulling your financial freedom date forward by years.
Dr James:If you wish to set up and manage your own investment portfolio, then this is designed to give you all the tools and knowledge you need to perform this properly. Properly, this means that, when viable and appropriate, you will have the know-how and skill required to build and manage your own invest portfolio, plus ensure that it is 100% optimized. If this sounds like your thing, then keep an eye out on the denison invest mailing list, where we'll be announcing the details of the next intake very soon. Okay, brilliant, so we've covered how crypto is taxed typically. You mentioned staking earlier, yeah.
Dr James:Which is something that a lot of crypto aficionados participate in, shall we say, and the way we can explain staking in a simple sense, or in simple terms, is kind of complicated. You need to know a little bit about how crypto works to go into a lot of detail, but the way it works is you basically place a certain amount of a crypto in a ring fenced wallet and then, in return for that being the case, you get paid a yield on that crypto in the crypto that you staked, or usually in the format of the crypto that you staked is the simplest way I can explain it, so hopefully everybody was following that one. And how is that taxed then?
Emily:so when you do that initial transfer in that's you still own that. You're not disposing of it, so that's fine. There's no tax implications of that. The only tax is when you then receive the staking rewards back, so that is taxed as other income on your tax return. So that'll be. You pay income tax but no national insurance contributions. So it's either 20, 40 or 45, just depending how much you earn um is, and you also have a thousand pound trading allowance which you can utilize against it. So if you've not utilized that anywhere else when you return um which it depends on what you're doing but if you've not utilised it, then basically your first £1,000 of income you earn from staking won't get taxed because you've got this allowance you can offset against it.
Dr James:Interesting, and is that the same allowance that you get whenever you sell stuff online online? You sell products online, or is that a different allowance?
Emily:yes, you're, is that like the?
Dr James:other income one right. So if you, if you have a small side gig business and you sell things online and you've already made a thousand over there, it's actually going to push your staking potentially into your income, yeah, into being taxable, yeah and it's also going to be um the case that potentially that it may push your marginal income into that bracket as well, from your job too yeah, yeah, it could, and if it goes so high, it could even make you lose your personal allowance um.
Emily:So that's kind of you get taxed even more. So we have seen it. Um, yeah, and also it's worth noting because a lot of people that invest in crypto are quite young um that if you have a student loan, student loan repayments also take account staking income. So, yeah, that that mean nine percent will come to be taken from your staking income. So if you're a higher rate taxpayer, you'd have 40 income tax plus nine percent um student loan. So it's almost half your staking is already gone um, and if you've not sold it for a profit, then it's not looking good yikes, okay, wow, I'm learning a lot today.
Dr James:I didn't know that. That was how they um, they dealt with staking. And, of course, another thing to mention is we've dealt with staking. Slight distinction between what I'm about to talk about now and staking, although on the face of it it mightn't seem that apparent. But there is also high interest crypto bank accounts so you can stake your stable coins inverted commas which are cryptos that are tied to the value of certain fiat currencies or real world currencies. So a common one is US dollar coins, so it'll always be the equivalent of the US dollar. It's pegged to its value, so one of these cryptos will equal a dollar, and apparently they have all these dollars in reserve as well somewhere. So they say anyway, at least that's the claim, um, so when you stake your dollar coins in a high interest bank account, then I believe there's slightly different rules still, because that interest, have I got that right?
Emily:it wouldn't be bank interest if it's not actual currency. So as it stands, a hmlc is not recognising stable coins as currency, so it essentially would fall under the same thing as staking. So it would be other income. So it would fall under that rather than on the bank interest section of your return no-transcript.
Dr James:So it's good that we've had that update, because obviously, if it was categorized as interest, there's different rules on that. Still, it doesn't necessarily count towards your income, does it it?
Emily:is still income. It just lands in a separate area of your return. There's a different allowance available, so you probably won't get the £1,000 trading allowance which is kind of the key bit.
Dr James:Right, because I think not to digress too much, I think, whenever it's interest, if you're in the basic tax rate, you have a £1,000 allowance and if it's in the higher then it becomes £500. But it would be categorized different, differently obviously. So you might have two if you were going on a tangent now, but if you stick some money and you had high interest, you could actually have a thousand of each tax-free potentially, whereas, yeah, yeah potentially, but obviously, and as you've just clarified, um, that is not the case.
Dr James:It's actually categorized the same. So you've got a thousand across all of them as your allowance, right? Fine, we're learning a lot today. Anything else that we feel are you. You feel that is worth mentioning whenever it comes to taxation on crypto I mean, there's a lot to talk about, really, isn't it?
Emily:oh?
Dr James:wow, we could, we could go on, we could go on forever. Okay, here's a fun question. What in your experience helping members of the public but also dentists with this stuff, what are the common pitfalls like? What are the common things that people run a file off that you almost, when you see them on the tax returns, you almost roll your eyes and you're like this again.
Emily:So these are the things that we can watch out for uh, I mean commonly people thinking that I won't find wallets that they've not told me about naughty, do that guys thinking that maybe hrc will only be interested in the transactions that are in your centralized wallet.
Emily:It's all the defy stuff. They won't, they won't care about that, they'll not find that. But we like, if I could find it, they can't. So, um, basically, if it's, if it's you put money into a, say, a centralized exchange, that if you then money into a centralized exchange, if you then send that out to a DeFi wallet, if I see some crypto leaving your account, I'm going to ask you where it's going. If that's going to a DeFi wallet, I need that wallet because you need to be able to trace absolutely everything through.
Emily:The great thing about crypto it's all there, it's all in the blockchain, you can see it. So, yeah, we just follow it through and just try and make sure we can draw all the dots, basically, um, and not have any unknowns. Obviously, it can be quite difficult when you have thousands and thousands of transactions, but that's why we do our reviews and I think mostly are asking for it. So it is really important that you do give them everything, because it's just gonna you're gonna get penalized later down the line if you've not actually chosen not to give them everything.
Dr James:Well, as you say, I mean the address for your wallets is called the public address and you can go to a block finder, I believe the websites are called and literally just paste it in and you can see all the transactions to the address. Yeah, it's all there.
Dr James:It's all there, Apart from certain cryptos which say that they can't be traced, but that's debatable. But certainly the majority of them are right, Like the majority of the common ones are, and, by the way, I'm definitely not advocating that people go look for those cryptos. Hmrc might've thought that through and found a way as well. Just making that super clear. But there are some out there that claim that. Shall we say they claim it. Any other pitfalls, any other biggies?
Emily:um, I mean generally not not declaring is also a big one. Um, because hmrc are kind of gonna find you out. Um, because so at the minute, um, the centralized exchanges a lot of them are choosing to share their data with HMRC and there has been nudge letters that have gone out to people that hold over a certain amount just to say we know your whole crypto. This is your opportunity to disclose it. So, absolutely, if you get one of those letters, you need to disclose it because they're on to you. The penalties are a lot more lenient if you choose to then disclose it rather than if you wait until they open a full inquiry. Then the penalties can be quite hefty. So I definitely recommend doing it early. If you've not had a nudged letter but you've not disclosed, definitely still you need to. Again, if you do it willingly, the penalties are a lot less. They can even be 0% if it's not over 12 months overdue. So they have been pretty good on the penalties as it stands, but I think that's going to change, particularly next year, from the 1st of January 2026.
Emily:It's becoming mandatory for exchanges to share their data with HMRC. This is called the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework and it's a global thing, so countries are kind of choosing to opt into it. So currently, 52 countries have opted in to start from next year, sharing their data and so share with hmrc and all the other kind of equivalents across the board. So, um, even if it's mcs that you need to be careful. So once they have access to that information, they're going to start using it from january 2027. So you've got time, um, to get things up to date. But I definitely recommend you do that because otherwise you're going to get, they're going to find the transactions because they're all linked to you. So, yeah, don't, don't leave it any longer don't dilly dally.
Dr James:And just on that, emily. Actually, what I was curious to ask is if anybody wants to talk to yourself about their crypto assets, where are they best off finding you?
Emily:yeah, I mean on our website there's a lot of crypto guidance, so um, the firm's called alexander and co, so you can just google us and find our website and there's loads of crypto pages on there, um, and you can kind of ask to speak to someone through there. Or you can contact me directly, um, my email address is emilyk at alexandercouk, so just feel free to drop me an email. Um, and, yeah, we can. We can have a chat. Generally, what we do is we can have a um a 30 minute kind of initial inquiry call which is completely free of charge, have a chat through, see if even you need to report anything um, and then we kind of go from there and get a plan together. Sometimes it's just simple go back through and just get everything up to date, although it can be a bit bit more complicated, so it's just case by case.
