Capital Gearing Share Discussion Threads

[dcarn] 30/10/2018 16:05

Hi,

I've a question with regards to section 104 holding, share purchase and subsequent sale.

Scenario being I have section 104 holding in share xyz with no purchases being made since 2015 and I have never sold any. I then purchase 10000 xyz shares on 15-10-18 for a short term trade and then sell 10000 xyz shares three weeks later on 5-10-18 for a small profit.

Question, does the 10000 purchase have to be added to the section 104 holding before calculating any gain / loss or is this treated as a matched trade under the 30 day rule?

HMRC HS284 is clear enough for disposal then acquisition within 30 days but it does clarify for acquisition and the disposal within 30 days.

Dcarn.

[fbrj] 25/9/2018 18:35

Gengulphus - a big thank you from me too!

Your reply obviously wasn't just dashed off in a couple of minutes so I really appreciate you for taking the time and effort in responding.

I can understand what you are proposing - just a matter of implementing (correctly!).

Thanks again

[asif12] 19/9/2018 20:25

Hi Gengulphus

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for the delayed response in getting back.

I will try the other thread as well.

Thanks

[gengulphus] 18/9/2018 09:40

asif12,

I've no experience of investing in Dubai and very little of investing abroad. But in very general terms, my impression is that the sort of thing you're talking about is more likely to be treated as some sort of partnership income than as capital gains - though it may well be possible to get various different tax treatments by structuring it appropriately.

I've got little knowledge of the range of options is for structuring such a deal, nor of what their various advantages and disadvantages are. And this is a thread specifically about CGT, rather than about tax more generally. So I think you would probably do better to ask on a more general thread about tax - might help you find one. (Though to be frank, dealing with tax issues involving multiple countries is a somewhat specialist subject, and the answers differ depending on the countries concerned - so one generally needs to pin such a question down to specific countries, and when one does so, it becomes more specialist. So you might end up needing to try to find a more specialist tax board, see whether you can get some answers from HMRC, or pay for tax advice. But I'm not saying you definitely do need to do any of those things - I simply don't know enough to even be able to say that for certain!)

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Gengulphus

[gengulphus] 18/9/2018 09:13

fbrj,

During the course of the last tax year I switched most of my trading to Hargreaves Lansdown. How do people convert their HL trades into a suitable format, other than a 1 by 1 line by line alteration of a downloaded spreadsheet? Previously with Barclays I just pasted my downloaded Excel files into the calculator.

I've no real experience of either cgtcalculator or Hargreaves Lansdown. But as a general rule, I'd expect to be able to do that sort of conversion by putting the spreadsheet I've got in one worksheet, then constructing the first row of another worksheet by formulae from the first row of that worksheet. So as a very simple example, suppose I had a list of trades in Sheet1, with the first column being B for Buy or S for Sell, the second being the number of shares bought or sold, and the third being the amount of cash spent or raised. And suppose I instead wanted it in the form (net change to number of shares) followed by (net change to amount of cash), then I could set cell A1 of Sheet2 to:

=IF(Sheet1!A1="B",Sheet1!B1,IF(Sheet1!A1="S",-Sheet1!B1,#N/A))

and cell B1 on Sheet2 to:

=IF(Sheet1!A1="B",-Sheet1!C1,IF(Sheet1!A1="S",Sheet1!C1,#N/A))

That takes a bit of time to do, but once done, I can then just copy row 1 on Sheet2 to further rows to do the same conversion on each corresponding row of Sheet1. I.e. basically very little work after the first row has been converted - though do check the details of an instance of each type of row to make certain the conversion formulae being used handle that type correctly!

And one other tip about the technique is that if you find an error in the conversion formulae, correct it in the first row and then re-copy the first row to all other rows. Otherwise, you're liable to find yourself with a spreadsheet in which different rows have different bugs remaining unfixed in them, which can be a bit of a nightmare to sort out if you later encounter further problems in the spreadsheet...

Gengulphus

[asif12] 15/9/2018 08:35

Just wondering if anyone has invested in a business in Dubai and what the tax implications are when you bring that money to the UK. I am UK resident and pay taxes here. Here is what I am planning to do (still early stages though).

My cousin who lives in Dubai is starting a jewellers. He asked me if I would like to invest in the business. As it is related to gold i am very keen. I am thinking of maybe investing around £20K or maybe invest money to buy 1kg of gold(so roughly about £35K). He will send me the profit i make each month through bank transfer etc.

Anyone know what sort of information i need to keep to show HMRC when i file my return?

In terms of his credentials - he is very good at what he does as he has many years experience in the gold business. If it is straight forward for me to invest then I might go for it.

If anyone has invested in Dubai etc - any advice would be much appreciated.

[fbrj] 11/9/2018 22:57

I've used the excellent cgtcalculator.com for many years. I have 2 questions:

During the course of the last tax year I switched most of my trading to Hargreaves Lansdown. How do people convert their HL trades into a suitable format, other than a 1 by 1 line by line alteration of a downloaded spreadsheet? Previously with Barclays I just pasted my downloaded Excel files into the calculator.

I only have hard copy of previous cgt returns (pc crash - and have lost my underlying spreadsheets). I have a figure for b/fwd losses for future offset. In constructing a spreadsheet for 2017/18 it seems to me that all I can do is to insert a fictitious trade in order to generate the correct b/fwd loss figure and inform HMRC what I have done. Any other suggestions?

[harrogate] 04/9/2018 06:23

Much appreciated Gengulphus. Thank you

[gengulphus] 03/9/2018 14:28

Harrogate,

Yes, I think you're right, and that's what I would do (except of course that if the gains previously deferred were on unlisted shares, I would use box 34 instead of box 26). I think I would also say something brief in box 54 such as "CGT computations include revived gains of £NNN that were previously deferred under EIS relief."

Cannot say that I'm 100% certain that's the exact way one is supposed to do it, but I don't know of a better one, and if by any chance it is wrong in some way, I don't think HMRC could do much more than tell one how to do it next time...

Gengulphus

[harrogate] 03/9/2018 12:55

Can someone tell me where on the CGT pages I include the amount of gain that I had previously obtained EIS relief on now I have sold the EIS shares after the 3 year period? Do I just include it as a "gain" in box 26 and show in my CGT calculation as gain previously deferred under EIS relief ( shares now sold) ? Really appreciate the help
Thanks

[rhcm] 07/5/2018 14:03

Gengulphus

Many thanks for clarifying the situation regarding brokers fees, you have saved me from falling foul of the Inland revenue. I cannot thank you enough.

[gengulphus] 07/5/2018 12:27

rhcm,

No, sorry, a fee has to be wholly and exclusively for the specific asset to be an allowable cost for CGT. A broker's quarterly fee is (unless I'm misunderstanding what you're talking about) for providing the account, which you could use for any number of shareholdings, and so it's not wholly and exclusively for any specific shareholding, and not an allowable cost for any of your shareholdings.

That might be a debateable point if you opened the broker account only for the purpose of holding one specific shareholding, and only ever actually used it that way. But I wouldn't bet on it!

Edit: By the way, I don't really know what you mean by "Can I still use ..." - broker's quarterly fees have never been allowable costs within my experience of CGT (roughly the last 20 years)...

Gengulphus

[rhcm] 07/5/2018 10:19

Gengulphus,
many thanks for the detailed reply, you really have been a great help. I would not want to make a claim immediately as i plan to use the loss in the future. Can i still use the brokers quarterly fee as an expense and add it to the loss in a similar way to brokers trading fees?
Thanks

[gengulphus] 05/5/2018 10:25

rhcm,

How to claim this as a loss?
I am in the process of moving broker and I have one company IFL which is currently suspended and the company have said shares are unlikely to be of any worth to shareholders. The new broker will not accept the transfer and the current broker cannot obtain a paper certificate. They have advised that the shares could be gifted to a charity via sharegift but how can i claim the capital loss?
Many thanks for your help.

First, do NOT try to use your broker as your tax adviser, unless you have a specific agreement with them that they will act as such. The terms and conditions for an execution-only broker account specifically exclude them giving you financial advice of any type, which includes tax advice (that's basically why it's called 'execution-only'), and even other, more expensive types of broker account such as advisory or discretionary accounts might well have limitations on the types of financial advice the broker will supply.

The reason I emphasise that so much is that giving the shares to a charity is one of the most certain ways to ensure that you cannot claim the capital loss! As the ShareGift website says (with my bold), "donating shares charitably gives rise to neither a gain nor a loss for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) purposes". I.e. giving the shares to ShareGift is of no value to you, nor to the charity (assuming that they really are worthless - it certainly sounds as though they are!). The broker is IMHO being rather irresponsible by even suggesting the course of action as a possibility - it is one, and they're not giving any financial advice by merely saying it's something they can do, but clients who aren't fully aware of what 'execution-only' means could easily read it as implying that donating the shares to ShareGift is a good idea... It generally isn't when you've made a loss on a share, especially a total loss!

The answer about what you need to do to claim the loss is: make a negligible value claim. Not "wait for HMRC to declare the shares to be of negligible value, then make a negligible value claim", just make one once you're reasonably certain
that they are indeed worthless (*). Usually, the point when you become reasonably certain of that for a company is when you get a statement that there is no realistic prospect of any return to shareholders from someone in a position to state that authoritatively - e.g. the administrator of a company in administration. I would generally be happy to base a negligible value claim on such a statement - indeed, I believe the reason such statements are made to shareholders is (besides informing them of the bad news about their investment) that it enables them to support a negligible value claim.

Why shouldn't you wait for HMRC to declare the shares to be of negligible value? Quite simply, the reason is that HMRC generally (a) only decide whether shares are of negligible value when they're asked to make a decision by a taxpayer making a negligible value claim; (b) even when they have made such a decision, generally don't make a public declaration of the decision. They do make such a declaration in some cases, by adding it to a 'Negligible Value agreements' list . But that list is limited to (in its own words) "shares formerly quoted on the London Stock Exchange", and "quoted" is a somewhat-slippery term with regard to tax... It certainly doesn't have the obvious 'everyday' meaning that "the London Stock Exchange quotes prices for it", as shares traded on AIM are clearly "quoted" in the 'everyday' sense but I have never seen a collapsed company on AIM make it on to the list...

Just what the exact requirements are to get on to the list, I haven't managed to work out, but in general, I would take the presence of a share on the list to mean "yes, HMRC will accept a negligible value claim for this share, provided the claim's dates fit the entry", but its absence to merely mean "you'll need other support for a negligible value claim about the share you're interested in". Note incidentally that presence on the list is not a substitute for a negligible value claim - you need to make one to establish the loss whether or not the share is on the list, it's just that if it is on the list and your claim fits the dates, you have the assurance that HMRC will accept the claim.

One other thing I'll mention is that you can accompany a negligible value claim with a "post transaction valuation check" request - see and the form it links to (the latter contains most of the information). That's another way to get assurance about whether HMRC will accept the claim - and especially around this time of year, you can send in the negligible value claim and "post transaction valuation check" request and leave HMRC plenty of time to tell you their answer before you have to submit the tax return.

(*) And that you actually want the loss. You're not obliged to make a negligible value claim for any specific date - it's just got to be a date:

* When the shares are of negligible value (and have become so since you acquired them).

* That is in the tax year that you make the claim or one of the previous two tax years. (The previous tax year is probably the most common case - e.g. a claim submitted with a tax return now is for the 2017/2018 tax year that that tax return is about, but made in the 2018/2019 tax year.)

* You still own the shares, and you must still own them on the likely-to-be-later date that you actually make the claim. (Basically, once you no longer own the shares, you have actually disposed of them for CGT purposes and so have actually realised the loss. Negligible value claims are there to allow people to deal with assets that have become worthless but they have difficulty actually disposing of, and so the rules don't allow you to waste the taxman's time with them once you have actually disposed of an asset.)

It may be that claiming the loss now is not something you want to do - e.g. it might be that dates in the 2016/2017 tax year are before you can establish that the company is of negligible value (note I haven't researched IFL more than very superficially for this post!), that your net gains in the 2017/2018 tax year are below the CGT allowance and so the loss would simply end up being wasted offsetting gains that weren't going to attract any CGT anyway, and that it's too early in the 2018/2019 tax year to be certain whether the loss would end up saving CGT or not. In that case, it's perfectly OK for you to defer making the negligible value claim until a time when you can get some CGT savings from the loss - though note that if you keep deferring making it in that way, eventually you will probably find that you have actually disposed of the shares and so actually have realised the loss, on a date not of your choosing. (The common case for that is that a company in administration or liquidation eventually gets dissolved, i.e. ceases to exist. Its shares cease to exist at the same time, and an asset ceasing to exist counts as actually disposing of it for CGT purposes. I don't know exactly what is happening to IFL, though, and given its international aspects, very possibly wouldn't understand exactly what the CGT treatment would be even if I did know...)

Gengulphus

[rhcm] 03/5/2018 14:34

How to claim this as a loss?
I am in the process of moving broker and I have one company IFL which is currently suspended and the company have said shares are unlikely to be of any worth to shareholders. The new broker will not accept the transfer and the current broker cannot obtain a paper certificate. They have advised that the shares could be gifted to a charity via sharegift but how can i claim the capital loss?
Many thanks for your help.

From the broker:
Please accept this message as confirmation that unfortunately,
International Ferro Metals is unavailable for certificated withdrawal. We would
either be able to offer to donate this holding to charity on your behalf via
Sharegift, or you would need to find another broker who is willing to accept
the transfer of a zero value stock.

From the sharegift site:
If you are a UK taxpayer, you can claim income tax relief on the value of most stocks and securities when you donate them to a charity. In addition, donating shares charitably gives rise to neither a gain nor a loss for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) purposes. This means that you will not be liable for any Capital Gains Tax (CGT) which you might have had to pay had you decided to sell the shares instead. However, you should be aware that you cannot offset a loss against other gains if the shares you donate have gone down in value.

Perhaps i will have to wait for HMRC to declare negligible value but that can take years and I will have to pay the brokers quarterly fee until the shares that time but that can be added to the CG loss. Is that correct?

Many thanks for your time

[sux_2bu] 13/4/2018 14:59

Gengulphus

Thanks.

[attrader] 11/4/2018 13:58

Thanks for such a detailed response. I guess you are right in duty-free shop analogy, it costs a lot more to set these structures up. So, unless someone has more than 30m it does not make sense to do it.

[gengulphus] 11/4/2018 12:18

attrader,

... is there a way to roll over capitals gains to next year or pay them down few years down the line?

The only methods I know about are:

* The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). If you reinvest capital gains in new shares of a company that qualifies for EIS on that issue of new shares, you get to defer CGT on the capital gains concerned. The CGT becomes due again if and when you sell the shares and in a number of other circumstances.

* The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). I don't know much about this, but I've read that investments under it qualify for "reinvestment relief", which is actual relief from CGT, not just deferral.

Note there are various conditions on these schemes that I haven't described. I don't know them in detail, and so won't attempt to answer questions about them. Don't let that stop you asking such questions here, but please ask people in general, not me in particular - if you address such a question to me, you're likely to find that I don't answer because I don't know, and other people are less likely to answer than they might otherwise be because they weren't asked!

And to be clear, I'm not saying there are no other schemes besides EIS and SEIS. There might or might not be: EIS and SEIS are the two I know about, but I'm not very knowledgeable about such schemes and could easily have totally missed the existence of others!

There are incubator fund structures in BVI allowing CGT free gains. You only pay when bringing money onshore. I wonder if you have come across them and how to work with HMRC to avoid potential issues?

Sorry, I have only basic knowledge about the taxation of foreign income and capital gains - enough to know of the existence of rules that depend of the differences between unremittable, unremitted and remitted money, but not much more. And that knowledge translates into a simple rule of thumb that I use in practice, which is just "Don't go there!"... Not saying that it cannot be financially worthwhile to go there - it probably can - just that it's an excellent way to add headaches to one's tax affairs, and I'm personally quite happy to (and can afford to) pay the possible price of missing out on some extra returns to avoid those headaches!

The same applies to schemes involving tax havens such as the BVI, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Bermuda - I know of their existence, but little more, and I avoid them and the tax headaches they can produce. I have looked at some in the past, and the conclusion I came to was that at best, the "duty-free shop principle" applies (a lot of the tax savings become profits for the product providers rather than for me). At worst, one locks oneself into some sort of structure to avoid tax, the government/HMRC introduces some 'anti-avoidance rules' that mean one doesn't actually get the tax benefits one was hoping for - but one is still locked in!

None of that is meant as advice - as far as I'm concerned, I can't make decisions for others about such things as offshore investments and tax havens, and what I consider a tax headache may be no real problem for others. Just as an explanation of where I'm coming from, so that people have some idea what sort of questions I will and won't be able to answer. In this case, I'm afraid I won't...

Gengulphus

[attrader] 11/4/2018 07:24

Gengulphus, is there a way to roll over capitals gains to next year or pay them down few years down the line? There are incubator fund structures in BVI allowing CGT free gains. You only pay when bringing money onshore. I wonder if you have come across them and how to work with HMRC to avoid potential issues?

[gengulphus] 09/4/2018 10:32

Recently introduced dividend tax...

There's no such thing!

Yes, I know that it's easy to think that way, and lots of people do, but the so-called "dividend tax" is just plain old Income Tax as it applies to dividend income - there have been special rates and other rules that apply to it for a very long time now. The "recent introduction" of it was a change to those rates and other rules for the 2016/2017 tax year, one of whose consequences is that it became possible for basic-rate taxpayers to end up having to pay some tax on their dividend income. That's something new for the basic-rate taxpayers concerned, but having to pay Income Tax on dividend income is not a novelty - higher-rate taxpayers and above have been doing it for many years now!

I don't mean any of that as a defence of those changes to Income Tax as it applies to dividends - in particular, I thought the old rules were unnecessarily complex, and I think the same about the new rules... But a major purpose of this board is to help people understand taxation (and CGT in particular) correctly, and that purpose is not assisted by the use of incorrect descriptions!

Gengulphus

[m_k_hubbert] 07/4/2018 17:35

HL's charges can vary and lower tiers apply if >10 / >20 trades in prior month. In order to reduce the burden of CGT calculations in future I've been making full use of our 2 ISA allowances each year and am approaching a point where frequent trades can be conducted within ISA's and stocks still outside ISA's traded infrequently thus minimising task of CGT reporting. Recently introduced dividend tax...and substantial cut in dividend allowance which came into force this week all point to holding stocks which pay sizeable dividends within ISA's. Another factor in my case is Scottish residence given that many of us holding investments will now be subject to higher income tax rates than in rest of UK. Fortunately, at present, dividend tax and CGT are reserved to Westminster thus we receive 'rest of UK' allowance for investments but there's always the concern that they could subsequently be devolved and it's not hard to predict that, should that happen, investment income and gains would be hit harder than elsewhere in the UK. All adds to case for ISA's....provided, of course,they too are not devolved at same point!

[handykart] 07/4/2018 17:06

If you leave a space blank for stamp duty,the calculator works it out for each purchase. If it was an AIM company just put a zero in for stamp duty, otherwise the programme works it out for you.The broker I use charges same price for each trade, so easy to put in.

[m_k_hubbert] 07/4/2018 16:52

axotyl, having switched brokers to HL a few years ago downloadable data is a great improvement vs previous brokers (Stocktrade, now taken over by Alliance Trust). Having said that HL's data does not supply all the fields needed to complete CGT returns. The solution which works for me was to write formulae for Excel Spreadsheets which effectively 'back calculate' the missing fields, namely allowable costs of acquisition and disposals. Fortunately HL's downloadable date includes the contract note reference which starts with 'B' for purchases and 'S' for sales which enables conditional formulae to handle stamp duty; in absence of these references more manual effort would have been needed on my part. As things now stand, and using CGTCalculator or Stonebanks I'm able to compile an entire years's CGT return in approximately 1 hour.