Capital Gearing Share Discussion Threads

[zimbi] 23/4/2013 17:26

I believe one can transfer shares to one's spouse and share the CGT load. Could the same be done with one's children? At the same time?

[shano2] 15/4/2013 07:50

GENGULPHUS - THANK YOU. (your explanation of the 30 day rule combined with the calculator recommendation has helped me resolve my multi-trade problem and it is such a relief that I wanted to shout about it.)

[miata] 13/4/2013 11:40

" do I still have to pay cgt next year.....or the next 5 nears"

Yes, to the Spanish tax authorities at your marginal income tax rate.

Should you return to reside in the UK without having spent five complete UK tax years abroad, you would be liable for UK CGT but with offset for the taxes you have paid.

When searching for the full spanish tax details ensure you look at those updated for the changes made to cgt in September 2012.

[lw425] 13/4/2013 10:41

Has anyone here been unfortunate enough to be awarded 'Trader Status' by HMRC, due to several years of profitable dealing?

How often does this happen?

[nina65] 12/4/2013 23:15

Hi guys I have a question ,I left the uk moved to spain in December and became non resident,(filled the p85 form ),i know i have to pay cgt for last tax year but do I still have to pay cgt next year.....or the next 5 nears it is confusing..thank you in advance.....

[beckaroo] 12/4/2013 23:01

Gengulphus,

Thanks, that is very useful information. Looking at HMRC site I notice that there is a Trust and Estate Tax Return, so that does seem to confirm that the two allowances are completely separate.

Cheers, Beckaroo

[gengulphus] 12/4/2013 22:07

beckaroo,

I think that as the trustee of a trust, you basically wear two different 'tax hats': jointly with any other trustees of the trust, you have a £5,450 CGT allowance to be used on the trust's capital gains and losses, and you have your own £10,900 CGT allowance to be used on your own capital gains and losses.

This is not something I'm completely certain about, as I've never fully enquired into the situation myself - but if you think about it, it's really got to work that way. If it didn't, very few people with CGT issues of their own would ever accept a non-professional trusteeship... Doing unpaid work for someone else's financial benefit is one thing, but having your own finances clobbered into the bargain would really be a bit much!

Furthermore, if the different 'tax hats' interfered with each other, anyone with more than one trusteeship (and professional trustees might have many) would have intolerable conflicts of interest, as they would have to decide which trust(s) got the benefit of the CGT allowance and which didn't...

Gengulphus

[beckaroo] 12/4/2013 19:23

I hope someone can answer this question, I can't find the answer anywhere.

If you are a trustee of a trust there is a CGT annual tax free exemption of £5450, half of an individuals annual limit. If the trust is cashed in, and you are a named trustee, so use this allowance, then the same individual also sells shares outside the trust for a profit can you also use the remaining £5450 of the annual individual exemption, or do you lose it all?

Thanks in advance

[shano2] 12/4/2013 18:49

Many thanks to all the answers, I am extremely grateful that you have taken the time to explain in a way that even I can understand. I now feel confident that I can go over my trades and apply the CGT rules correctly.
Also thanks for the calculator recommendations.

Gengulphus your explanation was excellent
I do hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

[gengulphus] 12/4/2013 17:20

shano2,

I am still lost as to which shares I should match up.
Any recommendations of software that works this out would be greatly appreciated as I have started trading in and out of the same company's shares several times a day, generally with the same quantity of shares and these tax calculations are causing a real headache.
Up to now i have used excel spreadsheets but would gladly pay for good software.

I have just printed out my trades over the last 3 months and have 70 to match up.

You will probably find the CGT calculators of considerable use! See the links in the header of the other CGT thread for where they can be found.

But it's a good idea to have a reasonable idea of how the matching process works, partly because it's far quicker if you have a rough idea upfront what an additional trade will do to your capital gains and losses than if you have to prepare calculator input and run it, partly because it will make the calculator output more comprehensible, and partly because the calculators aren't always adequate - when corporate actions are involved, they're likely to need tweaks to their inputs or even to be replaced by hand calculations in particularly awkward cases.

But they certainly ought to process the bulk of your transactions in a much less tedious and error-prone way than hand calculations!

Gengulphus

[miata] 12/4/2013 17:12

6768, You bought the shares at an average pool cost of 50p.

Trading ETF's within an ISA would avoid stamp duty and tax calculations.

Spreadbetting would also avoid avoid stamp duty and tax calculations.

[gengulphus] 12/4/2013 17:08

shano2,

Probably a simple question to those in the know - If you sell two lots of shares today and buy one lot back tomorrow which of the original lots do you use for B&B rules?
eg
12/4/13 sell 100 @ 50p
12/4/13 sell 100 @ 60p

13/4/13 buy 100 @ 40p

Neither!

The very first thing you do in the CGT calculations is apply the same-day rules. These say:

1) Merge any same-day acquisitions into a single acquisition.
2) Merge any same-day disposals into a single disposal.
3) If you then have an acquisition and a disposal on the same day, apportion the larger of the two if necessary to create one the same size as the smaller, match those two to each other (i.e. calculate the gain or loss on the pair and remove them from the list of transactions still requiring processing).

Apply the same-day rules to all dates before doing anything else. After you've done that, you have at most one transaction left for any one day. You then go through the transactions in date order, matching the disposals as you come across them under the 30-day rule if possible (*) and otherwise to the Section 104 pool, and merging the acquisitions as you come across them into the Section 104 pool. Note that the disposal matchings are done by the same "apportion first if necessary" procedure as in step 3 above, and that only acquisitions that haven't been removed by 30-day rule matchings of earlier disposals will survive to the point of being added to the Section 104 pool.

(*) If there are two or more acquisitions in the next 30 days, match to the earliest of them. (And if that earliest acquisition is smaller than the disposal, then some of the disposal will be left after the earliest acquisition has been matched, and will then proceed to be matched to the second-earliest disposal, and so on.)

Merging transactions just means creating the merged transaction by adding up the numbers of shares, various categories of costs and (where appropriate) disposal proceeds of the individual shares. Don't try to do it directly on cost-per-share figures - you'll just make things complicated and introduce possibilities of errors slipping in...

I'll illustrate the procedure on your example, but with the numbers of shares multiplied up by 100 and with £10 commission and 0.5% stamp duty added in to make them more realistic:

12/4/13 sell 10,000 @ 50p, incidental costs £10 commission
12/4/13 sell 10,000 @ 60p, incidental costs £10 commission

13/4/13 buy 10,000 @ 40p, incidental costs £10 commission + £20 stamp duty = £30

Convert from cost-per-share form to cost form:

12/4/13 sell 10,000 for £5,000 disposal proceeds, £10 incidental costs
12/4/13 sell 10,000 for £6,000 disposal proceeds, £10 incidental costs

13/4/13 buy 10,000 for £4,000 acquisition costs plus £30 incidental costs

Apply the same-day rules - the two sales need to be merged, so the list of transactions becomes:

12/4/13 sell 20,000 for £11,000 disposal proceeds, £20 incidental costs

13/4/13 buy 10,000 for £4,000 acquisition costs plus £30 incidental costs

Deal with the earliest transaction - it's the sale and matches the 13/4/13 buy under the 30-day rule. The sale is bigger than the buy ("bigger" being measured by the number of shares, by the way), so it gets apportioned into a 'matching' sale of 10,000 shares for 10,000/20,000 * £11,000 = £5,500 disposal proceeds and 10,000/20,000 * £20 = £10 incidental costs to match that buy and a 'remainder' sale of 20,000 - 10,000 = 10,000 shares for £11,000 - £5,500 = £5,500 disposal proceeds and £20 - £10 = £10 incidental costs.

The 'matching' sale and the buy are then used to calculate the gain: disposal proceeds - (acquisition costs + incidental costs of disposal + incidental costs of acquisition) = £5,500 - (£4,000 + £10 + £30) = £1,460 gain, and are removed from the list of transactions to be processed, leaving it as:

12/4/13 sell 10,000 for £5,500 disposal proceeds, £10 incidental costs

Or to be precise, leaving it as that plus a likely Section 104 pool of earlier as-yet-unmatched purchases plus possible future transactions. We then process the earliest transaction again, which is now the 'remainder' sale. If there are any more acquisitions in the 30 days following the sale (i.e. 13/4/13 to 12/5/13, both ends inclusive) then we match it to the earliest of those acquisitions; otherwise we match it to the Section 104 pool.

Gengulphus

[optomistic] 12/4/2013 16:21

shano, I'm reading from the sidelines and marvel that you are able to trade profitably several times a day considering commission and tax, well done! Or is it possible you are spread betting?
If 'normal' share trading try David's CGT calc. Just Google Stonebanks CGT calculator.
I find this an excellent program and simple to use when you become familiar with it...and you can always email David who is very helpful if you have a problem.

[shano2] 12/4/2013 15:33

Thanks Miata
To clarify:
If I had bought the shares on the 11.4.13
100 @ 45p
100 @ 55p
I am still lost as to which shares I should match up.
Any recommendations of software that works this out would be greatly appreciated as I have started trading in and out of the same company's shares several times a day, generally with the same quantity of shares and these tax calculations are causing a real headache.
Up to now i have used excel spreadsheets but would gladly pay for good software.

I have just printed out my trades over the last 3 months and have 70 to match up.

[miata] 12/4/2013 14:50

Depends on what price you bought them for (ie pre 12/04/13) and when.

[shano2] 12/4/2013 14:42

Hi,
Probably a simple question to those in the know - If you sell two lots of shares today and buy one lot back tomorrow which of the original lots do you use for B&B rules?
eg
12/4/13 sell 100 @ 50p
12/4/13 sell 100 @ 60p

13/4/13 buy 100 @ 40p

Thanks for answering, I cannot find this answer within the HMRC explanation.

[bengee] 05/4/2013 18:52

Hello, David77 & Gengulphus

Many thanks for your replies to my query.
Have a good weekend.
Bengee

[miata] 05/4/2013 18:20

Exiting the old tax year and entering the new tax year, here are the (un)exciting new allowances.

Allowances and rates
................................. ..2013-14
Basic personal allowance.............£9,440
Starting 10% rate for savings........£2,790
Basic rate limit....................£32,010
Higher rate threshold...............£41,450

Capital gains exempt amount.........£10,900
CGT disposal notification limit.....£43,600 *
ISA subscription limit..............£11,520

* Where gains do not exceed the exempt amount and losses are not claimed

[waterloo01] 05/4/2013 17:50

Cheers. How exiting a new tax year from Monday! Have a good weekend.

[gengulphus] 05/4/2013 17:02

waterloo01,

The actual numbers are:
2000 bought for 3858.7 (more than 30 days ago),
2000 sold on 4/04/13 for £7449.43
1250 bought 04/04/13 for £4450.

As the price has dropped today I can't decide if it's worth selling today to make more use of the cap gains limit or not to bother!

So 1250 of the shares you sold yesterday are matched under the same-day rules to the shares you bought yesterday, and the rest to 750 of the original shares. The 1250 were bought for £4450 and sold for 1250/2000 * £7449.43 = £4655.89, so you realised a gain of £206.46 on them, and the other 750 were bought for 750/2000 * £3858.70 = £1447.01 and sold for 750/2000 * £7449.43 = £2793.54, so you realised a gain of £1346.53 on them. Total gains realised are therefore £1552.99.

Sorry this comes rather too late for you to do any trading based on it - had a bit of a panic myself late this morning when, during what I thought was routine checking that I knew about all my gains and losses for the year, I discovered that an old total loss company (Coffee Republic) had actually been dissolved in December. As I hadn't previously put in a negligible value claim for the loss, not wanting it to be crystallised when the loss would have been wasted cancelling out gains that weren't going to be taxed anyway (since they were under the CGT allowance), the dissolution of the company had crystallised a large loss, making a bit of a mess of my previous CGT planning for this tax year! Have got it sorted now by selling to realise some extra gains, but there were a few hours of hectic calculations and decisions where to take the gains! And of course not looking at this board...

Gengulphus

[waterloo01] 05/4/2013 12:45

Gengulphus, again thanks although it's complexity is baffling.

The actual numbers are:
2000 bought for 3858.7 (more than 30 days ago),
2000 sold on 4/04/13 for £7449.43
1250 bought 04/04/13 for £4450.

As the price has dropped today I can't decide if it's worth selling today to make more use of the cap gains limit or not to bother!

[optomistic] 05/4/2013 12:34

Gengulphus
May I commend you for your CGT clarifications on this thread. I read them mostly out of interest as I leave my computations to David's CGT calc.
I have just read:
post '5 Apr'13 - 12:09 - 6759 of 6759'
and can completely agree with you that they they certainly are a bizarre set of rules!
I have always considered myself as slightly above average in being able to assimilate information but if these rules are able to be understood by the average person I must now sadly reassess myself as being below average.
Thank you for your tremendous work on this thread, it must prove invaluable to so many.
Regards
opto

[gengulphus] 05/4/2013 12:09

What If today (last day of tax year) I now sell the ones I bought yesterday (leaving me with no shares in said company). Assume then all the sales go against purchases? I will lose because of dealing costs and any price movement but it's cleaner or have I misunderstood again?

So if I've understood you correctly, you're considering ending up with something like the following (all numbers of shares and prices made up, since you haven't supplied any!):

20k shares bought in the past and not previously matched to sales for £20k total.
10k shares sold 04/04/2013 for £15k.
9k shares bought 04/04/2013 for £14k.
6k shares sold 05/04/2013 for £10k.

Then:

* 9k of the 10k shares sold 04/04/2013 will be matched to the 9k shares bought 04/04/2013 under the same-day rules. Those shares were bought for £14k and sold for 9k/10k * £15k = £13.5k, so realise a loss of £0.5k. Nothing you can do now will alter that, as the same-day rules are the top-priority CGT share-matching rules.

* The remaining 1k of the 10k shares sold 04/04/2013 cannot be matched under the same-day rules, because all shares bought on the same day have already been matched. The next-highest priority share-matching rule is the 30-day rule, but there are no shares bought in the 30 days following 04/04/2013, so they also cannot be matched under the 30-day rule. That leaves them to be matched to the 'Section 104 pool', which is just the technical term for all the shares bought in the past and not previously matched to sales. So they were bought in the past for 1k/20k * £20k = £1k, and sold for 1k/10k * £15k = £1.5k, so realise a gain of £0.5k. This also reduces the Section 104 pool to 19k shares bought for £19k.

You can do something now to alter that matching: if you buy shares on any day up to and including 04/05/2013, that will be in the 30 days following the 04/04/2013 sale and the 30-day rule will apply instead. Exception: if you buy shares in those 30 days, but also sell shares on the same day that you buy, then the same-day rules will take priority, so the 30-day rule will only be able to apply if more shares are bought than are sold on that day.

* The 6k shares sold today will similarly be unable to be matched under the same-day or 30-day rules, and so be matched to 6k of the remaining 19k shares in the Section 104 pool. So they were bought for 6k/19k * £19k = £6k and sold for £10k, realising a gain of £4k, and the Section 104 pool is reduced to 13k shares bought for £13k.

And again, you can do things to alter that matching:

- any buy today will be matched to it under the same-day rules;
- any buy of more than 1k shares made from tomorrow up to and including 04/05/2013 will not be completely matched to yesterday's sale (*) and so will have shares left over to be matched to today's sale under the 30-day rule, with the same exception as above about the possibility of the same-day rules taking priority;
- any buy on 05/05/2013 (awkward - it's a Sunday) will be within 30 days after today's sale, but not yesterday's sale, so will be matched to it under the 30-day rule, again with the same exception.

(*) Sales are matched to buys in date order of the sales, except that the same-day rules always take priority over everything else. So yesterday's sale grabs purchases under the 30-day rule before today's sale gets a chance, unless the sale is today, giving today's sale the first grabbing chance.

Before you comment, yes, it's a bizarre set of priority rules! The people responsible for creating it ought to be certified IMHO...

Gengulphus

[gengulphus] 05/4/2013 11:05

CGT - as you say no UK liability unless I return within five years.

It's actually unless you return without having spent five complete tax years neither resident not ordinarily resident, which is a somewhat stronger condition.

E.g. if someone leaves February 1st 2012 and returns February 2nd 2017, they haven't returned within five years - but they've only spent the four complete tax years 2012/2013, 2013/2014, 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 away, and so will have a UK liability when they return on all the gains realised while they were away. To avoid that, they need to complete the 2016/2017 tax year away, i.e. not return until April 6th 2017 or later.

Gengulphus

[waterloo01] 05/4/2013 10:49

Thanks,most helpful. It was an error. What If today (last day of tax year) I now sell the ones I bought yesterday (leaving me with no shares in said company). Assume then all the sales go against purchases? I will lose because of dealing costs and any price movement but it's cleaner or have I misunderstood again?