Answers · UK 2025/26
Do I pay Capital Gains Tax when I sell jewellery or antiques in the UK?
Only if you sell an individual item for more than £6,000 profit. Personal possessions (chattels) such as jewellery, antiques and art each carry a £6,000 chattels exemption per item, so gains on cheaper items are entirely tax-free, and gains just over £6,000 benefit from marginal relief that caps the tax.
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Jewellery, antiques, paintings, and most other personal possessions are known as chattels for Capital Gains Tax purposes, and each individual item benefits from its own £6,000 exemption. If you sell a single item for £6,000 or less, any gain is entirely tax-free, regardless of how much you originally paid for it. This exemption applies per item, not per collection -- a set of six matching antique chairs sold together, for example, may be treated as a single item (a 'set') for this purpose if they are sold to the same buyer at the same time, meaning the £6,000 limit applies to the whole set rather than to each chair separately; if sold separately to different buyers, each chair could potentially have its own exemption. Where a chattel sells for more than £6,000, there is marginal relief available: the taxable gain is capped at five-thirds of the amount by which the proceeds exceed £6,000, if that produces a lower figure than the actual gain. For example, an item bought for £2,000 and sold for £8,000 has an actual gain of £6,000, but the proceeds exceed £6,000 by only £2,000, so marginal relief caps the taxable gain at five-thirds of £2,000, which is £3,333 -- lower than the real £6,000 gain, so £3,333 is the figure that gets taxed. Any taxable gain, after applying the exemption or marginal relief, still benefits from the general £3,000 annual Capital Gains Tax exempt amount and is then taxed at 18% (basic rate) or 24% (higher rate) for most personal possessions, the same rates that apply to residential property gains. Wasting assets with a predictable useful life of 50 years or less -- such as most machinery, and by statutory concession most cars -- are usually exempt from Capital Gains Tax entirely, regardless of value, so this jewellery and antiques treatment does not apply to them in the same way.
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This answer is informational only and does not constitute financial, tax or legal advice. Figures are for the 2025/26 UK tax year. See our methodology and sources.