Crypto Perpetual Futures Tax UK: Why HMRC Treats Binance, Bybit and OKX Perps Differently

Perpetual futures on Binance, Bybit, OKX and dYdX are taxed differently to spot crypto in the UK. The mistake we see most often is filers throwing perp PnL into the same Section 104 pool as their spot holdings — which is wrong, and which can create artificial gains or hide real losses. This is the rule.

Are crypto perps CGT or income tax?

HMRC's CRYPTO22600 splits derivative-style activity into two camps. If your perp trading looks like investment activity — occasional trades, holding positions for days or weeks, position sizes proportionate to your overall portfolio — it is usually Capital Gains Tax. If your activity looks like a trade in the legal sense — frequency, organisation, leverage, time spent, profit motive as the dominant purpose — HMRC can recharacterise it as miscellaneous income or even trading income.

The "badges of trade" test is the same test that applies to forex and CFD traders. Most UK retail perp traders fall on the CGT side, but anyone running a desk-like operation should expect HMRC to treat the profit as income.

You do not own the underlying

A long ETH-PERP position is not the same as holding ETH. You hold a contract that mirrors the price. The asset on your tax return is the contract position itself, not the underlying token. This means perp PnL is not part of your spot ETH Section 104 pool and should never be added to it.

How to calculate the gain on a closed position

The clean way is to take each closed position as one disposal: entry notional minus exit notional plus or minus funding rate flows, expressed in GBP at the close block-time. Exchanges report this directly in their tax export — Binance's "Realized PnL" column is the figure you want, converted to GBP at the daily rate.

Funding rate payments and receipts

Funding payments you receive are taxable as miscellaneous income at receipt. Funding you pay is a deductible cost against the position. Most UK accountants net these into the closed-position PnL number rather than reporting them separately, which HMRC accepts as long as the underlying records support it.

Liquidations

A liquidated position is a disposal at the liquidation price. The loss is allowable against other CGT gains in the same year and can be carried forward indefinitely if claimed within the four-year window. Many UK perp traders forget to claim liquidation losses — these are often the largest tax-saving items on the return.

Cross-collateral and isolated margin

Using BTC as collateral for an ETH-PERP position is not a disposal of the BTC. Liquidation of the BTC collateral, however, is. Track collateral movements separately from position PnL.

CryptoLens distinguishes spot and derivative activity, sums perp PnL across exchanges in GBP, and includes funding flows in the closed-position figure.