sold shares ignorant of CGT. Any way I can avoid?

mubeye wrote: »

ok will just repurchase the lot I think.

You really don't need to repurchase all of them. It's probably smarter to do the maths at some point soon and decide how many you would have been intending to sell if you had been thinking about staying within the annual exempt amount.

If you don't mind keeping them long term you might want to leave a bit of headroom to sell shares of other companies later this tax year without running out of exemption. But buying *all* of them back seems a bit extreme.


If you buy back, effectively the sale you made two days ago gets matched with the purchase you make in the subsequent 30 days rather than the purchases you made in the distant past which created the big gain. However there may still be some minor gain or loss - for example if you originally bought at 10p, then sold last week at 100p, and buy all of them back at 98p, you still have 2p profit on all the shares, and the next sale in the future (eg at 200p) will use the original 10p cost for CGT purposes. Likewise if you buy back at 103p you have 3p loss on all the shares, but you still have the gain to come in the future and haven't used up any of your exemption.

bed and breakfast rules seem more about crossing tax years

The 30 day rule was put in place to stop people selling shares on the last afternoon of a tax year, and then buying back the exact same quantity and type of shares the next morning in a new tax year... and claiming all the shares they are now sitting on are new shares and they've used their exemption for last year on a "fake" sale-and- rebuy with the pile of shares having a new higher cost so lower future tax bill.

But the logic extends to any sale and repurchase the same day or within 30 days. If it was only a rule to stop people doing it on day 365 of a tax year, people would get around it by doing it on day 250 of a tax year instead. Basically people would get away with fake sales having no commercial purpose other than to dodge tax.

and can't find crystal clear statement it is okay for me to do this, but I think my heart is in right place

It is fine. You are just saying the sale two days ago was a fake sale and the proceeds of x number of shares on that sale should be matched with the purchase cost of x number of shares on the repurchase date a few days later. Rather than having them matched with the first purchase date aeons ago.