Note: This guide to avoiding capital gains tax in the UK was updated in June 2011. US readers might check out Mike’s tax site.
Most people won’t ever need to consider avoiding capital gains tax, because they’ll never be liable to pay it.
Your home and car are exempt from UK capital gains tax, as are personal belongings worth less than £6,000 when you sell them, and the average person has few other assets outside of cash, pensions, and ISAs – which are all exempt, too.
You also get a personal capital gains tax allowance every tax year (from 6th April to 5th April), which is usually sufficient for avoiding capital gains tax bills.
- The allowance is currently £10,600 in gains a year, where a gain is the increase in the value of the asset between buying and selling it. You subtract capital losses from capital gains to arrive at your total gain for the year. (Note: Gains and losses are only ‘realised’ when you sell).
Any gains in excess of your allowance are charged capital gains tax at either 18% or 28%, depending on your total taxable income. (See this HMRC CGT guide to work out which band you’re in.)
- Note that if you’re a business person selling your company you may be able to claim entrepreneurs’ tax relief.
CGT is avoidable for most
If you’re only investing a few thousand pounds a year, then by using ISAs and/or paying attention to your gains, particularly towards the end of the tax year, you can easily avoid paying CGT.
Wealthier people with big portfolios outside of ISAs, landlords disposing of rental properties, and entrepreneurs might need to do more.
For the really rich, avoiding capital gains tax is a way of life. Such people may even leave the UK to avoid a tax bill! That is beyond the scope of this article.
Reminder: You are entitled to avoid paying taxes where possible, but tax evasion is illegal.
8 ways of avoiding capital gains tax
I have paid capital gains tax, but only one year when I sold shares in a private company I co-founded. Here are my tips on avoiding capital gains tax.
1. Remember your annual CGT allowance
Stay alert to how much in capital gains you’ve made, and consider selling assets to use up your allowance (without going over it!) before the tax year ends.
Your £10,600 personal CGT allowance is for the gain on sales, remember, not the total value of the sale.
All your taxable gains count towards that one allowance.
- If you buy shares for £10,000 and sell them for £20,000, that’s a £10,000 gain, which is within your annual allowance. Make another capital gain of £1,000 in the same tax year and the excess amount above £10,600 would be liable for tax. (So you’d pay capital gains tax on £400 in this example).
It doesn’t matter when you bought the assets – it’s only the year in which you sell them that’s important for CGT.
2. Realise losses to offset gains
Your total taxable gain is the sum of all your capital gains – minus all the losses you incur when you sell taxable assets for less than you paid for them.
This means you can deliberately reduce your overall gains by realising losses. You might do this by selling shares that you’re holding at a loss, for instance, or by selling an antique that is no longer worth what you paid for it.
The idea is to reduce your gains to within your personal allowance for the year.
Remember that CGT can be as low as 18%, and it’s only charged on the amount over the annual allowance, so think hard before you sell just for tax purposes.
3. Exploit your annual ISA allowance and pension
The number one thing you can do towards avoiding capital gains tax is to invest within ISAs and/or pensions.
Gains and losses on investments inside an ISA sit entirely outside of the CGT system, getting rid of the whole problem. ISAs also save you paperwork!
Due to sloppiness on my part I didn’t use ISAs in my early years, and so not all my investments are tax-protected. Don’t make my mistake!
4. Don’t sell your asset
Pretty obvious, but often overlooked. Capital gains tax only becomes liable when you sell (or transfer) your asset. If you don’t sell it, you don’t have to pay tax on the gain.
Instead of selling you might enjoy a dividend income from a shareholding (or the rent from a property) indefinitely, and let the capital gain grow.
The risk is you’ll one day be forced to sell, either by your own circumstances or by say a company takeover, and then you’ll be hit with a big tax charge on the gains.
It’s better if possible to defuse big liabilities in advance.
5. Transfer assets to your spouse (husband, wife, or civil partner)
A rare perk of married life! Transfers between spouses are not taxed, and you both get an annual CGT allowance.
This means you can transfer enough of your assets to your husband or wife for him or her to sell to use up their own allowance.
This effectively doubles the CGT allowance for married couples. You might get into a fight though if you’re both keen investors with your own gains to realise!
6. Bed-and-spousing
In the old days you’d sell shares on which you’d made a good gain to use up some of your CGT allowance, and then the very next day you’d buy back shares in the same company.
This was called bed and breakfasting, and it is no longer possible, because you are no longer allowed to buy back the same shares you sold within 30 days if you want to crystalise a capital gain.
However, your spouse can buy shares in the company you sold.
So what you do is you sell the investment to realise the capital gain – taking into account your annual allowance, of course – and then your partner repurchases the same assets in their own trading account.
This way you keep the assets in the family, but you’ve defused the gain.
7. Bed-and-ISA-ing
Same idea as bed-and-spousing, but this time you re-buy within an ISA. (The only true love for me!)
Purchasing back the same assets in an ISA doesn’t violate the 30-day rule.
8. Carry forward capital losses
If you make an overall capital loss in a year, you should note it on your Self Assessment tax return.
Capital losses that you declare and carry forward like this can be used to reduce your capital gains in future years when you might otherwise be liable for tax.
The bottom line on avoiding capital gains tax
Avoiding capital gains tax basically boils down to three things:
- Preparation: By using ISAs and pensions, you prevent gains becoming taxable in the first place.
- Alertness: Being aware of your taxable gains over a particular year will enable you to decide whether it’s a good idea to realise other gains or losses.
- Defusing: If you’ve seen some of your assets increase in value, it may be worth realising some of the capital gains by selling them, and potentially repurchasing them after 30 days (or sooner if using one of the methods above). Like this, you use your annual allowance to stops gain growing over the years.
When employed together, these strategies for avoiding capital gains tax can easily reduce or eliminate gains entirely, unless you’re very wealthy. (In that case, it’s Monaco or the Bahamas for you, m’lad!)
If after everything there’s no way of avoiding capital gains tax then it’s best to pay it with a smile.
Nobody likes to pay tax, but you must have done something right to see the gain. And at least 72% will remain yours to keep!
(Image by: Itzafineday)
Comments on this entry are closed.
Thank you for explaining CGT to me; I never really understood it before.
Your site is really interesting.
Reading this just reinforces your earlier (and repeated) point that ISAs are great not just because of the tax benefits, but also because they take away so much hassle. And to think that some people try to turn income into capital gains in order to avoid income tax…. All I can say is that they must have accountants who do this work for them!
With the increased ISA limits I don’t think most of the readers of your blog will ever need to invest outside of one, except possibly in a pension. Either way, for most of us mere mortals CGT is only an academic concern, so long as we don’t forget to invest in ISAs from day one!
One last important point: UK gilts are CGT-free for UK taxpayers (though not funds of gilts, I think). The tax saving that creates on holding index-linked bonds in particular (the index-linking of the principal counts as capital gain) must be considerable. If anyone finds their investments outgrowing an ISA, they could simply put part of their gilt portfolio into individual gilts held outside the ISA and leave the other assets inside.
@Niklas – Thanks for the extensive comment! With Gilts, it is worth remembering they’re CGT tax free (click on the link to ‘UK Capital Gains Tax’ in the article for the detail of what’s exempt and what’s not) but of course the income isn’t.
Also, it’s really a requirement of the market that they are CGT tax-free, as otherwise liquidity and returns would be impaired in some way when considering the yield to maturity — although the same would be true of corporate bonds, and they are subject to CGT (I’m sure there’s PhDs on this).
Of course, being exempt from CGT is only helpful when you might get a gain! Most gilts are trading well above par, so buying now and holding to redemption will give you a capital loss (which won’t be offset-able against taxable gains elsewhere).
All the more reason to buy gilts when they’re trading below par, of course. (Those days of 6-7% yields look so glorious in retrospect. Worth remembering for next time!)
“Bed and Spreadbet”: If I had some gains in say Barclays shares, I could sell them today and buy the same number of shares as a spreadbet and keep it like that for 30 days and reverse the transaction. The benefit is I can book the capital gains for this tax year if I am not at £10,100. The only drawback is that spreadbet costs roughly 2-3% per year. The bid-offer spreads are very small and no stamp duty. Spread bets do not have any taxes, so not capital gains or capital losses or other taxes.
I am not sure if Bed-and-CFD is treated by the taxman in the same way. The benefit is that CFD could trigger capital losses / gains.
@Nandan – Excellent contribution, thank you. You’re quite right that spreadbetting can be used to remain exposed to a stock despite the 30day rule. I’d remind readers to read up in detail about spreadbetting, as novices often gear up much more than they think they do when using a spreadbet, and that spreadbetting can lose you a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. But for a sophisticated investor looking to use his or her CGT allowance, this is indeed another useful tool in the armory.
Hi, a member of my family who is 98 has a large amount in assets in shares she has had for 30/40 years. In some cases with aquisitions etc the original company the shares were in has been swallowed up by another and equivalent shares were issued. My question is, that as these shares were bought so long ago essentially for next to nothing will they have to pay capital gains on everything if they sell a particular share? Or is there some period of time with which you get more relief? Evem if there isn’t presumably there’s some sort of calculation to translate original cost into something meaningful i.e in today’s money which maybe takes inflation or similar into account
your help would be appreciated into any way we an lessen their exposure. Thanks
@Andy – Unfortunately I’m not a professional adviser and can’t give individual advice. I can say for what it’s worth is that as I understand it taper reliefs have been abolished on share disposals for UK investors. This would mean that unfortunately you would have to pay on the full gain, with no deduction made to allow for the passing of time or inflation. (There used to be a different system called indexation which did do this, but it’s been replaced by the flat 18% rate).
In general I approve of the simpler flat rate 18% tax as it’s far simpler, but this circumstance shows one of the drawbacks.
You should take professional advice I think (from an accountant maybe?) in case there are special vehicles that can be used in such cases between family members. I’d have thought this would be sensible anyway in light of the potential inheritance tax issues if your family member should pass away.
@Andy,
For shares held before 31-03-1982, the cost price is that on 31 march 1982 .
Please see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/hs284.pdf
If there has been no capital gains this tax year for her, I would suggest that she sell 10,100£ worth of shares before 5th April 2010 to have the tax free £10,100. Whatever the cost, capital gains can not be more than what you sell for I think.
Good luck,
@NS Excellent information, thank you — I was still in short trousers in 1982. But I need to be aware of this too, and will read up the link.
Thanks again, please stick around!
@Andy – also worth noting that there is a free CGT uplift on death so the entire estate becomes liable for IHT, but not CGT. This means, each asset is classed as if it is purchased for it’s value on the date of death. Original purchase values are then ignored.
Someone has mentioned telling your relative to sell these assets – this isn’t always viable, especially for those of pensionable age. You may find she is drawing income from such assets.
Good luck.
That’s why it’s always nice to have a tax planning before we get trap of any unexpected tax liabilities. In our country, transferring assets to our family is one preferable tax saving move. But yes..we can still opt not to sale them.
.-= Victorino on: How to reduce income tax payable and expense =-.
For a while now I’ve been seriously contemplating ways to minimize my taxes paid on investments. Even worse than the capital gains tax is the dividend tax.
Here in canada, we’re only taxed a maximum of 25% on half of our capital gains. In other words, 12.5% is a tops. And we got our tax havens, like the TSFA.
But dividends certainly aren’t as lenient. Especially when considering withholding taxes from outside countries.
Oi, you aren’t kidding when you said tax avoidance is a way of life…
.-= Aury (Thunderdrake) on: Hoarding Dragon Basics – The Stock Market =-.
@Aury – We’re lucky in the UK with the tax treatment of dividends. In fact, if you’re a lower rate taxpayer you don’t pay extra tax on the dividends you receive at all. Higher rate payers effectively pay 25%, which is less than the higher rate of tax. For a while with CGT at 18% it made sense to go for capital gains here, but if CGT is going to rise to 40% or more (still in dispute) then income products may get more popular again.
Just realised I’ll probably have to overhaul and re-write this whole page when we have the new CGT rules. Curse the politicians! 😉
Firstly, great website and fantastic information ! A quick question – If I made a capital gain loss in the previous fanancial year (09/10), can I carry this loss forward, ie £5K loss carried forward + £10,100 relief, total 2010/11 £15,100 without CGT ??? Cheers, David.
@David – I’m not qualified to give personal tax advice and so this isn’t that, but I believe in general that’s the case, yes. However, you’d have had to declare the capital loss on your tax return for 09/10 in order to now set it against your capital gain this year.
Please also note that as I write (9th August 2010) this article needs to be updated in light of the annoying changes in the recent emergency budget, which has lifted CGT for higher rate taxpayers to 28%. The general principles of CGT avoidance remain the same (if anything they’re even more important now!)
Thanks for the kind words about the site.
Does the liability for capital gains tax ever go away?? For example, if I sold a house two years ago and didn’t pay CGT, will I have to pay it when I return to live in the UK (I’ve been living abroad for 10+ years).
Hello faceless investor,
This is the first article I have read on this site but already you may well be one of my top resources to investing in the UK.
Well explained.
can i do the following in share isa ?
day 1 : brought 1000 shares in BT
day 2 : sold those 1000 shares @ a profit .
day 3 : brought 1000 shares in BT at a lower buy price
I am confused i thought the 30 day buy back rule applied in a isa
Great article !
@James – Assuming all those trades happened within the same ISA, the 30 day rule doesn’t apply. You can trade permitted securities whenever you like in an ISA and not worry about cgt at all.
Bought two houses . one is rented out. The other
I am going to live in but sell within the year
Will I have to pay cgt??
@Annabele – As I recall, if you have lived in the house for some period within the past three years you’re exempt from CGT. Some property investors ‘flip’ their main place of residence like this to avoid taxes, but I think the government was cracking down on it?
Anyway, a quick Google threw up this article but there’ll be loads more out there.
I’ve kind of neglected property as an investment here on Monevator because I don’t see the value currently, rightly or wrongly.
Any advice on how to handle losses due to crime? I made a large gain through selling shares and then subsequently lost considerably more money than that gain when I became the victim of a large financial fraud. I bought shares through a company that I had thought were FSA registered (turns out they weren’t) and it turned out that the shares were completely bogus (a so called boiler room scam).
In a common sense world, or a moral world, I would think my losses as a result of being a victim of a fraud could be offset against the gains from the share sale and so owe no CGT. However some have said that I might have to pay CGT on the gains and the fraud losses completely ignored, but nobody seems sure. An accountant that I’ve seen doesn’t want to know about the share scam, but even phoning HMRC for advice didn’t return a definitive answer! Google searches suggest that in the US losses due to crime can be put down as a loss (although not sure on exact details), but I can’t find anything for the UK.
Have you come across anybody in the same or a remotely similar situation before? Do you think I will have to pay CGT? Any advice would be most welcomed!
What capital gains am I likely to have to pay on land which may be sold in the near future which I have part owned with my brothers and sister for 25 years. The land will probably be sold for housing development. Is ther any way I can avoid what I understnad will be the 18% after my £10100 allowance.
I own one property already. I am about to purchase another to renovate and then sell. The property is a cash buy. My wife doesn’t earn so to avoid as much capital gains as possible she will be the purchaser. Will my wife get the full £10100 allowance? and if i were to place my children as purchasers would they also get the allowance so reducing the capital gains?
Hi, great article (google helped me stumble upon it!) I understand you don’t give individual advice but I really just need pointing in the right direction. I have spoken to my accountant but he himself doesn’t seem to sure so I didn’t buy his advice. The situation is my father has a bit of property in NE England but wants to sell up there so he can move down to the midlands nearer myself and family. So he wants to reinvest it in property down here once he sells up there. But obviously CG is a mjaor hurdle. What can we do?
Many thanks for your time and once again- great article!
@Nas – That’s a huge question with a lot of inputs and outputs. In general, it will help if he’s lived there (or can live there) for a period of time (can’t remember the specifics) before selling. If he’s held the property a long time, that will help, too.
Property investing and tax is a pretty specialised area, and it helps to speak to veterans. I suggest signing up and asking the pros on this Motley Fool board:
http://boards.fool.co.uk/property-investing-practical-50096.aspx
If you’re polite and respectful, they’re usually very helpful in my experience! 🙂
My wife inherited a property and it was valued for probate,when she sold the value had risen 3ok above the probate valuation.I appreciate that CGT is payable on the 30k less allowable expenses.My question is that as I am registered for self assessment and my wife is not can I declare the Capital Gain and thus offset some losses I have incurred share trading.
Great resource btw thnx
@Gareth — I am not qualified to answer this question for your specific case. I suggest you’ll need advice from someone with knowledge of how transfer of assets between spouses works etc.
Me and my partner have been renting out our flat for the past 12 months and renting in another. Do we need to notify the tax office and report our ‘earnings’?
Ta
Ronda — Yes, you do. You can set your rental income against interest payments and there’s a wear and tear allowance, too. Best to be legit in my view.
@ The Investor – Thanks for your swift reply. I’ll give them a buzz and ask for the relevant forms then, I ‘spose….
Cheers!
Hi, I am trying to understand CGT a little better, I am completely new to it. If I make a profit of £10,000 from selling shares, do I still need to complete a CGT form? i.e. I have not gone over my allowance of £10,600 for the year.
If so, do I declare any profit, even as little as £100?
@Chris — No, in most cases you only need to declare capital gains if either:
* you go over the annual CGT limit for your total gains (the gains you made from all your profitable share trades, minus the losses from all the loss-making ones, over the year)
or
* if you dispose of assets worth more than four times the annual allowance (i.e. £42,400 for 2011-2012) over the tax year. (Note this is total proceeds, not just profit).
You would not need to declare a £100 capital gain if that was all you made in the year. (I think it’s useful to think of ‘capital gains’ rather than ‘profits’ to avoid confusing your thinking with income from other sources).
The gains are reported on supplementary pages of your annual self-assessment form. If you don’t usually complete one but have made declarable gains, then you’ll need to do so for that year.
@ The Investor, Thank you for clearing this up for me. I was worrying that I would have to file a Captial Gains Tax even if I did not hit the threshold.
I have shares in an American company held since 1983,divdends are paid quarterly as a scrip issue and buy more shares.
This means I have bought shares on over 100 occasions,how do I determine the buying price for CGT ?
The Investor
Divorced 11 years ago. I have my own house and ex-wife has been living in old marital home since divorce. Marital home is in joint names and I have been paying the mortgage, £20,000 left. My Ex has come into some family money and wants to buy me out of my share of the house and change the deeds, we agreed that I would get £50,000 plus £10,000 to pay off my share of the mortgage. The house was purchased for £60,000 in 1991. I believe that my free entitlement before liability for CGT is £10,600. Am I liable for CGT on profits made from the sale of my share/interest in the marital home?
@Kort — I’m not sure, I’m afraid I avoid marriage like the plague! I’m guessing the answer is yes, but you are best seeking advice or asking the Revenue.
I have a current CGT Tax schedule which says I have made a loss from a disposal of a French Bank Fixed Interest Holding(BNP Paribas) – described as a ‘deep discounted Income Holding’ however, the LOSS is ignored in the total for CGT purposes. What I’d like to know is, if this is not a loss for CGT purposes(as it is ignored – much like an exempt holding) then should it not be recorded as a loss somewhere else(i.e for income purposes?) in my Tax Schedule. For example, under a different Tax Schedule from a previous year, I have another FI holding which actually made a gain but although this is shown as an ‘exempt holding’ the GAIN is accounted for in the income schedule(under UK Gov & Corporate Interest).
Hi,
Well firstly I’d like to say how impressed I am with this site.. I’m a relatively young business owner who is starting to benefit from the fruits of my labour – the info on here looks perfect to help me invest some returns.
Anyway, this question’s not about me personally….I’m trying to flesh out a conversationI had at the bar last night..
A very close friend of mine’s father owns a farm in a legal partnership with other family members. The farm hasnt been doing too well, so to pay some debt my friend’s father liquidated a house for circa £200K that he personally owned two thirds of. The sale money went straight into the business account and the bulk was used to pay creditors on the farm business – the rest left in the farm account and has now be used in the same tax year – no real profit in the business . He took nothing for himself personally.
Does he need to pay capital gains on the cash he made on the property investment? I’m assuming he does, as a gain is a gain? – even though he didn’t profit from it and transferred it sraight into the business.
Poor chap has just had one disaster after another – asset sale after asset sale.
Also, the additional third of the sale was owned by the farm business partrnership. I’m guessing this is still classed as an asset sale and subject to CGT over the 3 partners? If it is I’m thinking it should be subject to the 10% entrepreneurs relief rate?
Thanks very much for taking the time to read.
@ The Investor
Saw this article recently – very good summary.
Had a question:
Significant Capital gains tax as a result of a property sale (tax year 2010/11). Will do my corresponding tax statement by Jan 31 2011.
If I now (i.e. before Jan 31 2011) sold shares on which I had suffered significant losses, can I use those losses against my 2010/11 property gain ?
Or is it not possible to carry capital gains backward ?
Apologies, got the dates wrong in my previous post.
I meant “by Jan 31 2012”.
@Heiko — The tax year runs from 6th April through to 5th April next year. The statement is due in January for the previous year, but that’s a bureaucratic form-filing detail. Make sure you’ve figured out what period the gains and losses occurred in.
As I understand your situation I do not think you will not be allowed to carry the losses back against capital gains of prior years, but please do seek professional advice that is informed of your personal circumstances.
@All — I’d love to be able to answer these questions with confidence, but these are complicated issues which will very possibly need the attention of a specialist tax advisor who can look out for the particular issues in these domains.
Sometimes you have to pay professionals for advice, and spending a few hundred pounds with a good accountant – when it is regarding multi-tens of thousands of pound tax affairs – is a likely candidate. (As opposed to say, overpaying for mediocre fund management).
Fully applaud doing some research, of course, to get yourself up to speed first.
Note that property has particularly fiendishly complicated issues. But the tax man has put some decent information online.
This HMRC page introduces the basics of property CGT:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cgt/property/basics.htm
This page goes into more detail about calculating CGT on property:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cgt/property/calc-cgt.htm
This site answers some frequently asked questions in more detail:
http://www.netlawman.co.uk/info/allowable-losses.php
Hope these are helpful.
I am not however going to be able to be drawn into complicated individual questions, mainly because I’m not qualified to give you specialist, personal, advice, even if I knew all the details of your situation, which usually has a strong bearing on tax matters.
To brutally paraphrase the great philosophy Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”