Capital Gearing Share Discussion Threads

[gengulphus] 10/5/2017 14:56

The rule that there is no CGT on transfers between spouses (or civil partners) is specific to CGT, and it's not actually a rule that such transfers are exempt from CGT. Instead, it's a rule that such transfers will be deemed to have happened at the value that gives the transferor neither a gain nor a loss - i.e. at precisely the sum of all the transferor's allowable costs. That of course has the same effect as an exemption from CGT would have as far as the question of how much CGT is payable on that transaction is concerned - zero in either case. But it leaves no loose ends to be tidied up by further rules, whereas an exemption from CGT would - it would leave one spouse with an asset whose acquisition isn't 'visible' to CGT. As a result, it would need a rule about what the transferee's allowable costs are (for any transfer) and one about what the transferee's acquisition date was (for the rules about matching disposals of shares to acquisitions) - maybe others I haven't thought of. With the actual rule, the answers to those two questions are easy: the transferee's allowable costs are the value at which the transfer is deemed to have happened, their acquisition date is the date of the transfer. The relevance of all that to your question is that while a rule that transfers between spouses were exempt from CGT would have an obvious extension to other taxes, and so might reasonably be thought to be a special case of a more general rule about taxes in general, the actual rule works in terms of a CGT-specific concept, namely the allowable costs of an asset. As a result, it has no obvious extension to other taxes. And as far as I am aware, there is generally no such extension to other taxes. In particular, I don't know of any rule saying that transactions between spouses are exempt from stamp duty, nor do I have any reason to believe it's likely that there is such a rule. Having said that, I know very little about stamp duty. So don't take what I've said above as saying there is no such rule - there might be. It's just saying that your argument by analogy with CGT doesn't work - i.e. the "logically" in your last sentence is no such thing... Sorry! Gengulphus

[renew] 09/5/2017 21:04

I apologize that my question is Stamp duty and not Capital Gains but it is similar. A friend of mine and his wife let a house that they lived in for several years before buying their current home.They have a fixed term buy to let mortgage on their original home but this is coming up for renewal.My friend is a top rate tax payer but his wife doesn't work as they have 3 young children.I suggested to him that he should increase the mortgage on their current home and payoff the buy to let mortgage. If he then transferred the rented house into his wifes name all of the rental income could be set off against her personnel tax allowance.His mortgage adviser however has told him that she would have to pay stamp duty on half of the value of the house. I have always been under the understanding that transfers between husband and wife were not subject to taxes. Does anyone have experience of such a situation and what the correct tax/duty situation is? If the mortgage adviser is correct then logically my friend would have to pay capital gains on the value of the house at the time of transfer to his wife?

[finkwot] 04/5/2017 14:19

And ditto.

[deans] 03/5/2017 15:17

A belated thank you Geng' for the answer to my query.

[gengulphus] 27/4/2017 10:56

What happens if there simply is no record? Do HMRC assume zero cost? You produce an estimated cost, put some sort of explanation of the estimate in the appropriate 'additional information' box, and tick the box saying that you've used an estimate. You want the estimated cost to be as high as possible, so that the gain over it is as low as possible. All HMRC do is look at the estimate and decide whether to challenge it - which they're likely to do if they think it's too high, but not if they think it's too low. Using an estimated cost of £0 is quick, easy and safe. You may be able to produce a safe higher estimate - e.g. if you know that the shares were bought during a particular period but don't know exactly when or how much was paid for them, then the number of shares times the lowest share price in that period is a safe estimate. But that does require researching what that lowest share price was, so involves more work than an estimate of £0. One does have to exercise some judgement about whether trying for a higher estimate is likely to be a worthwhile use of one's time. E.g. if it's only reasonable to expect to be able to raise the estimated cost by a couple of hundred quid, then the CGT saving at 20% is about £40 - which probably doesn't justify spending more than an hour or two on it (depends on the value you place on your time, of course!). If it's a matter of raising the estimated cost by a couple of hundred thousand quid, on the other hand, it might be worth spending quite a bit more time on it - and probably even some money on a good tax adviser... Gengulphus

[finkwot] 26/4/2017 16:05

The trades being on the same day may have been because at that time it was a 20-minute drive each way to the bank to sell shares, presumably involving taking time off work. The sale was at 209p and the purchase at 212p, so there must have been some reason - if that was his idea of daytrading I would have much less work to do now :-)

[gengulphus] 26/4/2017 13:19

A bit of googling has thrown up the fact that independent taxation of married couples was introduced in April 1990, resulting in them have a CGT allowance each rather than one CGT allowance shared between them. Not certain how that might lead to a same-day sale and repurchase of a shareholding in March 1990 being a good move, but there might be some sort of connection... Possibly to establish which spouse owned it going forward? Gengulphus

[gengulphus] 26/4/2017 13:07

If a stock was sold and repurchased on the same day in 1990, before the 30-day rule was introduced, does the cost for CGT purposes derive from the purchase price on that day, without reference to either the sale price on that day or the original, earlier, purchase price? The 30-day rule doesn't apply to a sale and repurchase on the same day - only to purchases on the next 30 days after the date of a sale. However, that's only because there are the same-day rules, and had been for a long time before the 30-day rule was introduced - I think, but am not 100% certain, ever since CGT was introduced. (That's why the 30-day rule is sometimes known as the 'anti bed-and-breakfasting' rule: 'bed-and-breakfasting' was the practice of selling just before the market closed one day and buying back just after the market opened the following day in order to realise a desired gain or loss without running into the same-day rules and with minimal time spent out of the market.) The same-day rules are applied to every day that one acquires or disposes of shares before applying any other rules to any date. They basically say: 1) If there are multiple acquisitions on a day, merge them into a single acquisition of the total number of shares for the total costs. 2) If there are multiple disposals on a day, merge them into a single disposal of the total number of shares for the total disposal proceeds and costs. 3) After doing steps 1 and 2, there is at most one acquisition and at most one disposal on any day. On any day that there is both an acquisition and a disposal, match them to each other in the usual way - i.e. if they're of equal numbers of shares, calculate a gain or loss from them and remove both the gain and the loss from further consideration; otherwise, apportion the larger into a part that matches the smaller (with a gain or loss being calculated from that part and both the smaller and that part being removed from further consideration) and a 'remainder' part, which remains under consideration. So by the end of applying the same-day rules, there is at most one transaction on any day - there can be an acquisition, a disposal or neither, but not both. Then, and only then, do all the other rules come into play, saying basically that you work through the disposals in date order, trying to match them first under the other rules. Those other rules have varied over time: before 6 April 1998, I believe they were just matched to the 'Section 104 pool' of earlier, as-yet-unmatched acquisitions; from 6 April 1998 to 5 April 2008, they were first under the 30-day rule, then under a 'last in, first out' rule for acquisitions between those dates, then under the 'Section 104 pool' rule for earlier acquisitions; since 6 April 2008, it's first under the 30-day rule, then under the 'Section 104 pool' rule. Background: I'm trying to calculate potential CGT liability on a holding in RDSB which was acquired when Shell took over British Gas last year. The BG. holding goes back into the mists of time, probably to privatisation, but I don't have records before 1990. However, the entire holding was sold and bought back on one day in March 1990. If that lets me out of trying to find non-existent earlier records I'll be glad. The calculations are bad enough as it is, with 27 years of mergers, demergers, consolidations and B shares. So I'm afraid that the answer is probably that the same-day sale and repurchase in March 1990 are matched to each other under the same-day rules. However, as the above indicates, I'm not 100% certain about when the same-day rules came in - I think that they were probably there from the start of CGT, as "which shares did I sell?" was a question that pretty obviously needed answering from the start and things could get pretty complicated without the same-day rules or something pretty similar. But my knowledge of CGT doesn't extend back to 1990, so I don't actually know... A same-day sale and repurchase of the holding seems a bit odd for a holding that's still around 27 years later - one indicates a 'trading' approach, the other a 'long-term holding' approach, and the two aren't usually compatible with each other! Furthermore, March is a plausible month for tax manoeuvres aimed at beating changes that are being introduced in the tax year starting the following April 6th. So I do wonder whether there was some CGT change then that made the same-day sale and repurchase worthwhile... Gengulphus

[gengulphus] 26/4/2017 12:15

Transfers between spouses do not constitute disposals for CGT purposes - such transfers therefore don't count towards reporting threshold. I'm afraid the first part of that is not true: for CGT purposes, transfers between spouses do count as disposals by the transferor and acquisitions by the transferee. The special rule that applies to transfers between spouses (or civil partners) is not that they're somehow not disposals and acquisitions, but that the transferor identifies which assets they're disposing of (by the normal share identification rules in the case of shares) and adds up their allowable costs, and the transfer is deemed to happen at the resulting total regardless of what was paid (or usually not paid!) for them. The net result is that the transferor's CGT calculation works out as zero (i.e. their total allowable costs for the assets concerned minus their total allowable costs for the assets concerned), and the transferee effectively 'inherits' the transferor's allowable costs. It's sometimes known as the 'no gain / no loss' rule, and that's an accurate description - there is a disposal, but the rule ensures that it realises neither a gain nor a loss. As to how much that disposal contributes towards disposal proceeds for the tax return's requirement to report capital gains and losses if disposal proceeds exceed 4 times the CGT allowance, I'm afraid I don't know. It's pretty clearly one of zero (i.e. not contributing to it), the sum of the allowable costs that the transfer is deemed to happen at, or the market value of the asset on the date of the transfer (which I think possible, but pretty unlikely). I do think though that one could pretty safely count it as not contributing - even if one is supposed to use one of the other two methods, it would require quite a pedantic tax inspector to haul one up for it and even if they did, I cannot see more than a "well, you know now, so don't do it again" slap on the wrist being justified. So it's only the first part of the answer that I'm disagreeing with. One can get in a real mess if one assumes that a transfer to one's spouse doesn't count as a disposal for CGT purposes, because that assumption leads to one having more undisposed-of shares for CGT purposes than one actually owns. E.g. suppose one buys 2000 shares at £5 each, then transfers 1000 of them to one's spouse, then (more than 30 days later) buys another 3000 shares at £10 each, and that one eventually sells the resulting holding of 4000 shares for £15 each. With the transfer counting as a disposal, it matches half of the original acquisition, leaving one with the other half of that original acquisition (1000 shares with base cost £5k) and all of the later acquisition (3000 shares with base cost £30k). The CGT computation on the final sale matches the 4000 shares sold to all of those, so the resulting gain is £60k - (£5k + £30k) = £25k. If the transfer didn't count as a disposal, one's undisposed-of shares would be all of the original 2000 (base cost £10k) plus all of the later 3000 (base cost £30k), a total of 5000 shares with base cost £40k. The share matching rules would say that the 4000 sold were matched to 80% of them, so the capital gain would be £60k - (80% * £40k) = £28k - and you'd be left with a ghostly 1000 undisposed-of shares with a base cost of £8k... Gengulphus

[gengulphus] 26/4/2017 11:08

Gengulphus, your point re 'difficulties Executors could face if they were required to work out capital gains for assets held for many years' is most valid...and in the recent past I've been thankful when dealing with a relative's Estate to only have to consider valuation at date of death. In case of another relative, fortunately still living, I've had to go back to March 31, 1982 to establish acquisition price of Diageo (then Grand Metropolitan Hotels) and further adjust for other corporate actions over the past 35 years - messy to say the least. You don't need to tell me! Though in my experience of the issue (some forced disposals in the tax year before death), fortunately I only had to go back about 15 years... Still quite a task! The best solution I've found for assets where it would be extremely problematic to determine 'pool cost' is to stagger disposals over more than 1 tax year so that the reporting thresholds in any single tax year are not exceeded, currently £11.3k gains or £45.2k disposal proceeds; in this way nothing needs to be reported. Yes, indeed - as I said, it might be worthwhile to sell enough each tax year to use that year's CGT allowance. Though I should have mentioned not exceeding the disposal proceeds limit as well. One other comment on that is that when multiple assets are involved and it's a matter of choosing which to sell, it may be worth giving priority to "defusing" the difficult ones. E.g. if one has two long-held shareholdings worth say £30k each, one with an easy history saying that it's a £20k gain on a £10k base cost, and the other with a difficult-to-research history, the best move might be to sell £11.3k worth of the latter, on the principle that the gain on it cannot exceed the disposal proceeds (the CGT base cost cannot go negative). It doesn't maximise use of the allowances, but if it can done for a couple of tax years, that history won't ever need researching! One other point that I should have mentioned in my original reply is that if you're planning to sell for this sort of "CGT defusing", it's generally a good idea to wait to do it in the last few weeks of a tax year (this is a rather badly-timed question!). Otherwise, it could be embarrassing to carefully use up your CGT allowance on selling one asset and then have a forced disposal on another! [Edit] Above approach may only work where there are gains. In order to claim losses it's necessary to work out the 'pool cost' regardless of whether reporting threshold was crossed. Well, there's no real point in "defusing" losses anyway. You might as well just keep the loss-making assets until you need the loss because you've been forced to realise gains in excess of the allowance, or until the loss turns into a gain, or until death. Of course, when there's an unknown history, one might not know whether a holding is standing on a gain or a loss. The general approach I would take if I only had limited information about a holding's history is to work out the maximum unrealised gain there can be on it by assuming that the base cost of the holding at the earliest time I can trace the history back to was £0, then calculate forward from that. E.g. if there was a holding of 4000 shares, and I knew the last two transactions on it were a sale of 1000 shares and before that, a purchase of 2500 shares for £4 each, with the history of the other 2500 shares unknown, then: * The 2500 shares with an unknown history have a base cost of at least £0. * So after the buy, the 5000 shares have a base cost of at least £10k. * So after the sale, the remaining 4000 shares have a base cost of at least £8k, and so the gain on selling them is at most what they're sold for minus £8k. If that ends up saying that the gain is at least a negative amount, that means that it's certain to be a loss, and there's no "CGT defusing" reason for selling. Otherwise, one has to either work on the basis that it's a gain of the maximum amount it could be or do further research into the holding's history. Finally, I should add that all of the above is only about "CGT defusing" reasons for selling. There may be other reasons for selling, and if so, they should generally be given priority - as the old saying goes, don't let the tax tail wag the investment dog! (Though watch out for the rare occasions when the "tail" and "dog" roles are swapped. For example, a shareholding in Royal Bank of Scotland purchased 10 years ago and held ever since might only be worth around 5% of its purchase value, while assuming a 20% CGT rate, the CGT saved by realising and claiming the capital loss might be worth 20% of 95% = 19% of its purchase value...) Gengulphus

[deans] 26/4/2017 06:27

MKH thank you.

[finkwot] 25/4/2017 12:57

This one should (I hope) be straightforward. If a stock was sold and repurchased on the same day in 1990, before the 30-day rule was introduced, does the cost for CGT purposes derive from the purchase price on that day, without reference to either the sale price on that day or the original, earlier, purchase price? Background: I'm trying to calculate potential CGT liability on a holding in RDSB which was acquired when Shell took over British Gas last year. The BG. holding goes back into the mists of time, probably to privatisation, but I don't have records before 1990. However, the entire holding was sold and bought back on one day in March 1990. If that lets me out of trying to find non-existent earlier records I'll be glad. The calculations are bad enough as it is, with 27 years of mergers, demergers, consolidations and B shares. Thanks

[targatarga] 25/4/2017 11:38

Thanks Gengulphus - great answer, yep. If he was to have to go into a home it would get interesting! kind regards tt

[m_k_hubbert] 25/4/2017 11:26

Transfers between spouses do not constitute disposals for CGT purposes - such transfers therefore don't count towards reporting threshold.

[deans] 25/4/2017 06:21

Many thanks Gengulphus for all the hard work you put in on this thread. My query is related to the last post. If you transfer stock to your spouse does the value of that stock count towards the reporting threshold? Cheers

[m_k_hubbert] 24/4/2017 15:42

Gengulphus, your point re 'difficulties Executors could face if they were required to work out capital gains for assets held for many years' is most valid...and in the recent past I've been thankful when dealing with a relative's Estate to only have to consider valuation at date of death. In case of another relative, fortunately still living, I've had to go back to March 31, 1982 to establish acquisition price of Diageo (then Grand Metropolitan Hotels) and further adjust for other corporate actions over the past 35 years - messy to say the least. The best solution I've found for assets where it would be extremely problematic to determine 'pool cost' is to stagger disposals over more than 1 tax year so that the reporting thresholds in any single tax year are not exceeded, currently £11.3k gains or £45.2k disposal proceeds; in this way nothing needs to be reported. I've recently used this approach to dispose of this same relative's unit funds given that 1) she couldn't recall when and how she acquired the assets (gift or inheritance) and 2) income was re-invested quarterly which amounted to at least 70 individual acquisitions to be accounted for, including quite a number where statements from fund managers were no longer to hand. Phasing the disposals over 2 tax years means the problem is now behind us and extremely onerous CGT accounting was avoided by staying below the reporting limits. [Edit] Above approach may only work where there are gains. In order to claim losses it's necessary to work out the 'pool cost' regardless of whether reporting threshold was crossed.

[gengulphus] 24/4/2017 13:49

Provided he keeps them until he dies, no CGT will be payable on them when he dies, and the estate will be assumed to have acquired them on the date of death at their value on that date (known as the 'probate value'). I.e. basically all unrealised capital gains at the date of death are forgotten as far as CGT is concerned. The same applies to any other asset he owns until he dies. Of course, for others who are over the IHT allowance, there is a flip side to that - namely that if they keep assets until they die, those assets definitely will be in their estates as far as Inheritance Tax is concerned... But even when the deceased is over the IHT allowance, this is generally good news for executors, since Inheritance Tax usually depends only on the probate value, which doesn't involve delving back into history, while CGT can involve doing so to a very considerable extent. E.g. if I were to die right now, I imagine my executor would be pleased not to have to work out the CGT on my BT shareholding, which goes back to the original privatisation in December 1984! Executors may nevertheless have to deal with CGT in two circumstances. One is if they sell the asset from the estate, as from the CGT point of view the estate realises the capital gain or loss between probate value and the sale proceeds, and it's the executor's job to deal with the estate's CGT. That gain or loss will probably be quite small, assuming the estate is wrapped up reasonably quickly, and it can often be avoided if necessary by passing the asset directly from the estate to a beneficiary - in that case, the beneficiary takes over the estate's CGT position of having acquired the asset on the date of death at probate value. The other is that executors do have to deal with the deceased's tax affairs up to the date of death. So if the deceased has sold (or otherwise disposed of) an asset before death and needed to tell the taxman about CGT on it, but hadn't yet done so, then the executor takes that job over from them. The net result is that in general, it's best not to try to 'tidy up' assets with big unrealised capital gains on them before death - you'll end up potentially paying more tax and making the executor's job harder! There is however one problem with that approach, which is that one might be forced to dispose of the asset. For shares, the main danger of that is takeovers; for corporate bonds, it's them maturing or having terms and conditions that allow the company to compulsorily redeem them. If the unrealised gain on them is over the CGT allowance and death is reasonably likely to be one or more tax years away, then hanging on to the asset risks being hit by a CGT bill on the entire excess of the gain over the CGT allowance, when the gain could have been realised in stages over more than one tax year to use all of their CGT allowances. I.e. in those circumstances it might be worthwhile to sell enough each tax year to use that year's CGT allowance - whether it is depends on how likely a forced disposal is. I'm familiar with the general rules about CGT that I've described above and just had to write it out, but unfamiliar with "Scottish widows corporate bonds shareclass A" and not particularly experienced at researching bonds (*) - so I'll leave you to try to work that out! So basically, my answer is that you may well be best off not selling any of the bonds and just leaving the CGT situation on them disappear on death - but you should check up on the chances of s forced disposal before death before actually deciding. (*) Assuming it is actually a corporate bond - a fund name might include "corporate bond" if that's what it chiefly invests in, and insurance companies have a habit of calling various investment products "bonds". But I'm not particularly experienced at researching funds or those investment products either! Gengulphus

[targatarga] 23/4/2017 11:33

Hi - my uncle [now aged 82] was sold a reasonably large amount of Scottish widows corporate bonds shareclass A[I assume approx 15 years ago by lloyds]. Income has been reinvested and he believed the bank was doing his tax affairs. This is his main asset and he is planning to leave the fund for his beneficiaries. If he was to die would cgt be payable [I assume they're now worth approx 70k more than he paid]. He is well under the iht limit and lives in rented accommodation. He lives off his state pension with another small add on pension. Just wondering if he should start selling some of the bonds up to his cgt limit every tax year. kind regards and tia.. tt

[gengulphus] 19/4/2017 11:39

If I sell stock outside an ISA, and buy it back in an ISA within 30 days, does the 30-day rule apply? (It seems unlikely, but it would make life much simpler.) As you fear, the answer is no. Basically everything you do inside an ISA is completely invisible to CGT, so all that CGT sees is that you've sold the stock outside the ISA. And most moves between inside and outside an ISA are cash transfers (either subscriptions or withdrawals), which makes them invisible to CGT as well. You can withdraw stock from an ISA, but if you do, its acquisition cost afterwards is counted as being its market value on the date of withdrawal (which the ISA manager should tell you if and when you withdraw stock), not as its acquisition cost within the ISA. So it's only its subsequent gains or losses outside the ISA that count for CGT - you can't withdraw a loss-making holding from an ISA to make use of its existing loss. You generally cannot transfer stock into an ISA, which makes that useless for CGT planning as well. There are exceptions for shares obtained from a few types of matured employee share schemes, if they're transferred into the ISA within 90 days (IIRC) of getting them. I believe (but am not certain) that the CGT treatment of those exceptions is basically to forget about the shares transferred in and their acquisition cost, which means basically that any gain or loss on the shares between the time they come out of the employee share scheme and the time they're transferred into the ISA doesn't get taken into account by CGT. That opportunity to nullify gains is however quite limited, firstly by the fact that one's choice of shares it applies to is very limited, secondly by the fact that 90 days isn't long to build up big gains, and thirdly by the ISA allowance - any such transfer is counted as a subscription of an amount equal to the market value of the shares on the day they're transferred in. The net result is that, apart from those limited exceptions for shares obtained from employee share schemes, ISAs cannot be used to create, destroy or modify gains or losses for CGT purposes, and so their role in CGT planning is limited to being able to continue to hold shares that you sell outside the ISA to realise desired gains or losses, rather than changing what those gains and losses are. Gengulphus

[finkwot] 19/4/2017 10:32

Thanks for that. Unfortunately it's just over £3,000, and over 5% of the value, so I shall have some more work to do if we decide to sell the shares. Another question: If I sell stock outside an ISA, and buy it back in an ISA within 30 days, does the 30-day rule apply? (It seems unlikely, but it would make life much simpler.)

[david77] 18/4/2017 22:12

"In calculating the cost of her shares for CGT purposes, do I subtract the money she received after the rights issue from the original cost of the shares," Yes, in my view - but I am not qualified to give advice.

[gengulphus] 02/4/2017 22:11

The gain or loss is the sales proceeds, translated to sterling at the exchange rate on the day of sale, minus the allowable costs, each translated into sterling at the exchange rate on the day the cost was incurred. In particular, in the simple case of a single buy and a single sale, each with just incidental costs (e.g. broker's commission, stamp duty if applicable), the cost of the shares themselves and the incidental costs of buying are translated at the exchange rate on the day of purchase, and the sales proceeds and the incidental costs of selling are translated at the exchange rate on the day of sale. Note that the currency doesn't actually need to be converted to/from sterling - it's just a matter of working out the sterling equivalent using the exchange rate on the day concerned. But you do need to translate the sales proceeds and each allowable cost to sterling using the right day's exchange rate, and then do the proceeds minus sum of allowable costs subtraction on the sterling amounts - don't do the subtraction on the foreign currency amounts and then translate the resulting gain or loss to sterling. In terms of the paper tax return, the Capital Gains Summary supplementary pages ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/self-assessment-capital-gains-summary-sa108 ) is obviously relevant, and I've noticed that the Foreign supplementary pages ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/self-assessment-foreign-sa106 ) contain a bit about foreign tax on capital gains on their last page. But I've very little experience with foreign tax (and have no wish to gain more - dealing with one country's taxman is quite enough for me!), so I'll have to leave you with that pointer in case it's relevant and nothing more... Gengulphus