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Tax Year-End: Capital Gains considerations

Just a quick note to remind those of you with non-ISA investments that just because you haven’t earned crystallised  capital gains in excess of your annual CGT allowance (£11,000 in 2014-15) doesn’t mean you can ignore the planning. The markets have been pretty good over the past few years and many non-ISA investors will have holdings “pregnant” with potentially taxable gains.

And this applies to trustees too – your CGT allowance is 50% of the personal allowance at £5,500.

Unless your investments are modest, my advice is to try and crystallise gains up to just under your annual allowance, so that your portfolio is no longer carrying those gains into a later year, when future sales may cause aggregate gains over the allowance and tax becomes payable.

Even where you do not wish to make any wholesale changes to your investments, it is possible to swap one share (or fund) for another which is very similar. For example, swapping one UK tracker fund for another. This crystallises the gain into the current tax year.

Or maybe you have brought forward capital losses from earlier tax years. Can you utilise them against current gains in an efficient manner?

No reporting of capital gains under the annual allowance is required on a self-assessment tax return to HMRC.

Just sensible housekeeping really 🙂