Capital gains on shares

Lippizanna

I have taken on a new client who has a large portfolio of shares (various companies). He has had them for many years and want's to sell them but hasn't any real idea when he obtained them and at what price. Are there any guidelines as to how we work out the capital gains in such cases ?

JodieR

I know that when I was dealing with capital gains on shares about 12 years ago any share purchased before March 1982 you would value at the value on that date, so if your client acquired them before that then it shouldn't be too hard to establish their value, although you need to be careful as companies often issue bonus shares or make payouts when they've sold off parts of the business or merged with other companies and these events can sometimes affect the value of the shares. If they were acquired after March 82 then I would think you would need to find out when they were purchased and then use that information to establish the market value at the time. If I were you I would play this one of 3 ways... either get as much information together as you can and then get an accountant who specialises in CGT to do the calculations for you as they'll have software with all the share prices recorded and it will automatically account for any changes in the share holdings etc over the years; or else, depending on the value of the portfolio and how quickly the client wants to cash in the shares he could dispose up to the annual limit each year so that you can be certain that no CGT will be due.