Tax-loss harvesting · UK investors

Make your losses count.

Tax is the biggest fee most investors will ever pay. We shrink it — legally, automatically, all year round — by putting your portfolio's losers to work. Same index. Same risk. Higher after-tax returns.

Calculate your saving →
Every loser, put to work
losses banked against your tax bill £0

Even in a good year, some stocks fall. We sell the fallers, bank the loss for your tax return, and instantly buy a similar stock — so you stay fully invested.

First, the basics

Why is there a tax at all?

Imagine you buy a rare football card for £10. A few years later it's worth £50, and you sell it. Your profit is £40. In the UK, the government takes a share of that profit. It's called capital gains tax, and on investments the rate is 24%.

You sell the card for ............ £50.00
You originally paid .............. £10.00
Your profit ...................... £40.00
Capital gains tax, 24% of £40 .... −£9.60
You keep £40.00 − £9.60 = £30.40

Two things to remember. First: you only pay tax when you sell. Second: if you sell something at a loss, that loss works like a voucher — it cancels out profit on something else, pound for pound. Those two facts are the whole idea behind Harvest.

It's not what you make.
It's what you keep.

The Harvest principle
The Harvest difference

One giant brick, or 500 LEGO blocks?

Most people buy the S&P 500 through a fund — one giant brick containing America's 500 biggest companies. Instead of owning the fund, Harvest lets you own all 500 stocks individually, in exactly the same weightings as the index. Your basket rises and falls the same way. The difference is what you can do with the pieces.

The index fund

One giant blue brick. All 500 companies, moulded together. You can't carve up the pieces — when you need money, you sell a chunk of the whole brick, and pay tax on the profit inside it.

500 companies, one piece
Stuck with the brick — you can only ever sell "the market"

Harvest

The same brick, built from 500 individual pieces. Green ones are up, yellow are flat, red are down — and you can pick out and sell just the red ones.

up   flat   down — sell off the pieces you don't want
How the saving happens

The rule HMRC allows

You already win on the way up. Now your portfolio wins on the way down too. In any year — even a great one — three things are true underneath the index:

1

Some stocks go up

A handful of big winners usually drive most of the index's gain. In 2025, fewer than a third of stocks beat the index itself.

2

Some stocks go down

Every single year, plenty of companies finish lower than where they started — even while the overall basket rises.

3

We sell the losers

Each faller is sold to bank the loss as a tax voucher, and we instantly buy a very similar company — so you stay fully invested and barely notice.

Why does that matter? Here's the simplest possible example. Say you need £50,000 out of your £1m portfolio this year, and there's £20,000 of profit baked into what you sell:

WITHOUT HARVEST
You sell ........................... £50,000
Profit inside that sale ............ £20,000
Tax at 24% ......................... −£4,800
You keep after tax ................. £45,200

WITH HARVEST
Profit inside that sale ............ £20,000
Loss vouchers banked this year ..... −£20,000
Taxable profit ..................... £0
Tax at 24% ......................... £0
Our fee (0.15% on £1m) ............. −£1,500
You keep ........................... £48,500
With Harvest you're £3,300 better off — this year alone

The losses cancel the profits, pound for pound. Whatever vouchers you don't use this year carry forward — forever — to cancel future gains. And the fee doesn't grow with your withdrawals: take out more, or land a big one-off gain, and the gap just gets wider.

Honest answers

When does it actually help?

Lots of people draw on their portfolio every year — to live on, to buy a car or a house, to cover whatever life throws at them. Sometimes you simply have to sell some stocks to pay for the things you want. And sometimes a big gain lands all at once: shares that have rocketed (SpaceX, crypto), a property sale, taking money off the table, or selling a business. All of it attracts capital gains tax — and all of it can be offset.

Made for you if…

  • You take money out of your portfolio — even 5% a year was enough to make withdrawals tax-free in every decade we tested
  • You're banking a big gain: private shares like SpaceX, crypto, a second property, or selling a business
  • You want to de-risk — trimming a position that's rocketed, without handing 24% of the win to HMRC
  • You hold investments outside an ISA or pension (a general investment account)
  • You're gifting shares (a gift counts as a sale for CGT — vouchers can cancel it), or you may one day leave the UK

Not for you if…

  • All your investments already sit inside ISAs and pensions — those are tax-free anyway
  • You'll never sell and have no gains elsewhere — then the benefit is deferred, not cash today
  • Your portfolio is under ~£250,000 — the maths works, but the £ saving is small
The obvious question

Why can't I just do this myself?

In theory, anyone can sell their losers. In practice, almost nobody does — for four very good reasons.

Timing

Losses are perishable

You can't go back and harvest the March 2020 crash in 2023. If nothing was watching when the dip happened, those vouchers never existed. Captured, though, they last forever. That's why the engine runs every day — not once a year before your tax return.

Workload

500 stocks is a full-time job

Nobody actually buys 500 individual shares by hand — let alone watches every one daily, sells the fallers, finds a similar replacement, and rebalances back to the index weightings. Our automation does all of it, including fractional shares, with no trading fees.

Paperwork

HMRC's rules are a minefield

Every sale has to respect the 30-day matching rule and Section 104 pooled cost across hundreds of positions — then land correctly on your tax return. We track every pool, every voucher, every rule, and hand you one tidy report at year end.

Infrastructure

You can't download this

Doing this properly means regulated custody, daily execution across 500 names, and audit-grade tax records. It isn't an app you can knock together — it's a regulated investment service. That's the point: it's hard, so it's valuable.

Real scenarios

Joe, Jill and Jane

Three people, three very common situations. Same maths as the calculator below — portfolios growing at 10% a year, today's 24% capital gains rate, our fee already deducted.

Joe sells his business

Joe has a £2m portfolio with Harvest. Seven years in, he sells his company for a £5m gain — a £1.2m tax bill on its own. Seven years of banked loss vouchers wipe out the first chunk of it.

Tax on the sale, alone£1,200,000
Tax with Harvest£1,025,600
Joe is better off+£122,100
Jill buys a house

Jill has £1m invested. In year eight she needs £500,000 out for a house — by then her portfolio has doubled, so an index-fund sale is over half profit. Harvest sells her red blocks instead.

Tax on the £500k, index fund£64,000
Tax with Harvest£0
Jill is better off+£44,800
Jane lives off her portfolio

Jane has £3m and draws £150,000 a year to live on. In an index fund, every year's withdrawal carries a growing tax bill. With Harvest, a decade of withdrawals stays tax-free.

Tax over 10 years, index fund£138,800
Tax with Harvest£0
Jane is better off+£97,200

With Harvest, you will always be better off.
That's our promise.

It isn't marketing — it's how the pricing is built. Our fee is capped at 30% of the tax we save you. Save nothing, pay nothing. Save something, keep at least 70% of it. There is no combination of markets, withdrawals or gains where Harvest leaves you worse off.

The Harvest Guarantee
Pick your Harvest

One engine, three ways in

Different situations need different amounts of harvesting. Every option carries the same guarantee: our fee is capped at 30% of the tax we save you — so we only make money when you save money.

For the Jills · buying something big

Smart Withdrawals

No year-round harvesting — we simply own your index as 500 pieces and, whenever you need money out, sell the red blocks first so the withdrawal comes out tax-free or close to it.

  • Index in 500 pieces, same weightings
  • Tax-aware selling whenever you take money out
  • HMRC report at year end
0.10% a yearcapped at 30% of your tax saving
The full engine
For the Janes · drawing down, gains ahead

Harvest Core

Always-on. We scan daily, harvest every worthwhile loss the moment it appears, replace it instantly, and bank the vouchers — so they're already sitting there whenever a gain lands, expected or not.

  • Everything in Smart Withdrawals
  • Daily scanning & automatic harvesting, all year
  • Voucher bank that carries forward forever
  • Offsets gains from anywhere — not just this portfolio
0.15% a yearcapped at 30% of your tax saving
For the Joes · a big sale on the horizon

Gain Event

Selling a business, a property, or a chunk of shares in the next year or two? We invest the money you have now and harvest hard ahead of the sale, so the vouchers are waiting when the gain arrives.

  • Everything in Harvest Core, tuned to your timeline
  • Aggressive harvesting ahead of a known gain
  • Plan for the disposal itself, with your accountant
Nothing upfront20% of the tax we save you on the event
Your numbers

Keep more of what you make

Everything below is a total over the period you choose, not per year. Your portfolio is assumed to compound at 10% a year — £1m today is ~£2.6m in ten years — so the tax problem, and the saving, grow with it. Calibrated on simulations of three real decades of market history (1996–2025) at today's 24% capital gains rate.

Total tax doing it yourself (index fund)
Total tax with Harvest
Your portfolio at the end (10%/yr growth, after withdrawals)
Capital gains tax , without harvesting
Capital gains tax , with Harvest
Total tax saved
Our total fee (0.15%/yr, never more than 30% of your saving)
Spare loss vouchers still banked at the end
You keep (tax saved minus our fee),

All figures are cumulative totals over the period you've chosen, not per year. Your portfolio is assumed to compound at 10%/yr — so £1m today is far bigger by the end, and the savings grow with it. The one-off gain is assumed to land mid-way through the period. "Without harvesting" is the CGT an index-fund investor pays on the profit baked into each year's sales — the longer you've held, the more of every £1 you sell is taxable profit. "You keep" = tax saved minus our fee; because the fee is capped at 30% of your saving, you're never worse off with Harvest. Loss vouchers carry forward to offset future gains. Illustration only, not tax or investment advice; outcomes depend on markets and your circumstances.

0.15% a year
£1,500 per £1m · capped at 30% of the tax we save you · no trading fees · no stamp duty (US stocks)

Our fee can never exceed 30% of your tax saving — so you always come out ahead, or you pay almost nothing. And if the calculator says Harvest barely helps you, we'll tell you to buy a cheap index fund instead. Honestly.

The Harvest Guarantee

You will always be better off — and you keep the lion's share.

Of every £1 of tax we save you, at least 70p is yours. Our slice is never more than 30p — and if we save you nothing, we take nothing. We only earn when you gain, and you always gain the most.

Save nothing → pay nothingSave something → keep the lion's share