What your foreign currency or overseas investment is worth in pounds, from one exchange rate to another.
Gain or loss after fees
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Enter the amount and both rates to see the result.
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Bought dollars, euros or shares priced in another currency? Enter the amount, the exchange rate on the day you bought and the rate on the day you sold, or today’s. The calculator converts each amount into pounds at the rate of its own date and gives the gain or loss after fees, with the workings. For an investment it splits the result into the currency effect and the price effect. The tax notes below are HMRC’s, for UK taxpayers.
“Foreign currency” is cash or a currency account: the amount stays the same and only the rate moves. “A foreign investment” is shares, a fund or property bought and sold in that currency: enter the purchase price and the sale price, or what it is worth today.
A rate can be written two ways: £1 = 1.33 dollars, or 1 dollar = about £0.75. Say which one you use and enter both rates that way. Use the rate you actually got from your bank or broker, which already includes its margin, and add any commission or fees separately, in pounds.
Each converted amount is rounded to the nearest penny, with halves rounded away from zero, and the return to two decimal places. The gain is the value less the cost and the fees. The break-even selling rate is the rate at which the value just covers the cost and the fees. Copy the workings, export them as a CSV file or save them to Priostack.
Rates quoted as foreign currency per £1:
Cost = foreign amount when bought ÷ buying rate
Value = foreign amount when sold ÷ selling rate
Gain = value − cost − fees
Return = gain ÷ cost
Rates quoted in pounds per unit of foreign currency: multiply instead of dividing.
For an investment, currency effect = purchase price converted at the selling rate − cost, and price effect = value − that same amount.
HMRC’s Capital Gains Manual (CG78408) takes 3,000,000 units of a foreign currency received from a sale at 40 to £1, so their cost is £75,000. Disposed of at 32 to £1, they bring £93,750: a gain of £18,750 before any fees, a return of 25%. For an investment: US shares bought for 10,000 dollars at 1.25 dollars to £1 cost £8,000.00; sold for 12,000 dollars at 1.35, they bring £8,888.89. The gain is £888.89: the rise in the share price adds £1,481.48 and the fall in the dollar takes away £592.59. The share example’s rates are illustrations.
Convert the amount into pounds at the rate on the day you bought it and again at the rate on the day you sold it, then take one from the other. In HMRC’s example, 1,000,000 units acquired at 40 to £1 cost £25,000; disposed of at 25 to £1 they bring £40,000, a gain of £15,000. If the currency falls against the pound, the same sum gives a loss.
Foreign currency is a chargeable asset, so disposing of it can give a chargeable gain or an allowable loss (HMRC, CG78300). Two exemptions matter for individuals. Currency bought for your own or your family’s spending abroad, including keeping a home abroad, is exempt (Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, section 269). And since 6 April 2012 money in a foreign currency bank account gives no chargeable gain or loss (section 252; CG78320). Currency you received as pay, interest or dividends was not bought for spending abroad, so the first exemption does not cover it (CG78315). This calculator does not work out any tax.
In sterling, at the rate of each date: the cost is the dollars paid converted at the rate on the day you bought, and the proceeds are the dollars received converted at the rate on the day you sold. HMRC does not accept working out the gain in dollars and converting it at the selling rate (CG78310). The dollars you receive then have a sterling cost of their own, their value in pounds on that day, and spending or exchanging them can give a separate gain or loss (CG78300), unless an exemption above applies. HMRC does not prescribe which rate to use, but expects a reasonable and consistent method.
The one actually applied to your deal, as shown on your statement or contract note: it includes your provider’s margin. For an estimate, the Bank of England publishes daily spot rates against sterling, quoted as units of currency per £1, and says they are not official rates.
For a foreign investment, the result has two causes. The currency effect is what you would have gained or lost if the price in the foreign currency had not moved: the purchase price converted at the selling rate, less the cost. The price effect is the rest: the change in the price, converted at the selling rate. Together they make the gain before fees, to the penny.
This calculator gives general information and is not legal, tax, financial or accounting advice. The rates are the ones you enter: check them against your statements, and for tax, check HMRC’s guidance or ask an adviser.
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