do you actually declare your crypto casino winnings on your tax return??

Angela

Angela

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had a decent month, up a few hundred quid, and now i've gone a bit crazy bout it. do i need to tell HMRC about gambling winnings? does anyone actually declare this stuff? and does it being crypto rather than a normal bank withdrawal change anything?

really don't want a letter landing in 3 years saying i owe them plus penalties. i've genuinely no idea how any of this works, feel a bit daft asking but here we are
 
good news for once. in the uk gambling winnings aren't taxed. never have been. so you don't declare a betting win to hmrc whether its 50 quid or 50 grand, its not income as far as they're concerned. genuinely one of the only good things about gambling here
 
@goodoldfiat is right about the gambling itself - in the UK, gambling winnings are not taxable income and you do not declare the win.
The bit people miss is the crypto layer. When you eventually sell that crypto for pounds, that disposal can be a separate capital gains matter on any increase in the crypto's value between when you acquired it and when you sold it. The gambling win is tax-free; converting the crypto is a different question. I am not an accountant and this gets technical quickly,so for actual numbers talk to one - but do not assume "gambling is tax-free" automatically covers the crypto conversion as well. They are two separate things.
 
oh i hadn't even thought about that part. so the actual winning is fine, but turning the bitcoin back into real money might be the bit that gets taxed? thats a lot more fiddly than i expected 😵
 
Worth flagging for any Americans reading, because it's the reverse of the UK situation. In the US, gambling winnings absolutely ARE taxable income - you're expected to report them to the IRS. On top of that, crypto is treated as property, so cashing it out is a separate capital gains event.

So a US player can get hit on both sides: income tax on the win, capital gains on the crypto disposal. You UK and Australian folks genuinely have it easy by comparison, and people constantly assume their country's rule is the universal one. It isn't.
 
yeah down here in oz recreational gambling winnings aren't taxed either, the ato doesn't treat a normal punters wins as income. the catch is if youre doing it as a business, like a genuine professional gambler, then it gets complicated and can become assessable. but for your average bloke having a punt on the weekend, no tax on the winnings. cripto disposal thing Harry mentioned might still apply mind you
 
And here's another one for the ever-growing list. Cash, in a shop. You win, the lass pays you in notes, you walk out, the end. No blockchain, no "disposal event", no capital gains, no accountant, no letter three years later. You've genuinely invented seventeen new ways to owe tax that simply did not exist when I started doing this. Astonishing achievement when you think about it
 
this is a dangerous half truth and people get genuinely burned by it. crypto isnt anonymous, its pseudonymous. every transaction is public and permanent on the chain forever. the second you cash out through a kyc exchange (coinbase, kraken, binance) your real identity gets attached to that wallets entire history, backwards and forwards.

tax authorities buy chain analysis tools and exchanges report to them. "the casino didn't report me" means nothing when your exchange hands over your full transaction record with your passport attached. don''t treat crypto as a way to hide income.treat it as a permanent public ledger with your real name stapled to the exit
 
ok the kyc exchange exit being the weak point, that's fair, ill give you that. but lets be real, if you're playing small and not cashing out life changing sums, nobody is sat there chain-analysing your 200 quid lmao. for the average punter its a non issue in practice
 
For the average small player you're probably right that nobody's actively looking. But "probably nobody's looking" and "it's untaxed" are completely different statements, and people blur them together constantly. One is a risk calculation, the other is a claim of fact. Treat it as the first, never the second like confusing the two and is exactly how people end up genuinely surprised down the line 🤡
 
in spain is not the casino that get you, is the bank. you cash out the crypto,money arrive in your account, the bank see crypto coming in and they ask you where is it from, and they report to the tax office. like we say in the other thread, the casino is not the problem, ur own bank is the problem. they watch the money come in and they watch it go out
 
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