Capital Gains on Share-Save scheme

1950sparks

I am in a Share-Save scheme run by my employer which matures in Jan 2009 and believe I am liable for Capital Gains Tax on any profit I make by exercising my share option.
Someone in the company I work for has suggested that if I exercise my option in March 2009 and have the profit payed in two installments (one in March and one in April) then I can legally avoid paying C.G.
Does anyone have any idea whether this is true or not ?

CLAPTON

you pay CGT when you sell the shares
so you can sell some of the shares and use your 9,600 CGT allowance in this tax year and then sell the rest after 6 april and use next years allowance for those.
if married you can transfer some to your spouse and use their allowance too

how much profit do you expect to have ?

1950sparks

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply Jimmo and Clapton: I think my case is not as straightforward as most though; the UK company I started the scheme with was taken over by a Mexican based company who honoured the arrangement by agreeing to let us buy 'nominal' shares in the original company at approx £5 and then immediately buying them back at approx £8.50. Thus, as far as I can tell, there is no opportunity to sell in different periods or transfer to spouse. Apologies for not mentioning this earlier, but this is the reason that it was suggested that the profit (payed through payroll) be paid to me in two different tax years by a private arrangement between me and the payroll dept. They seem to be OK with this idea but I'm concerned about the legality. The profit is in the order of £11K according to my calcs, so the CG is not a huge amount; it's just that I would avoid it if I could. Thanks again, if you have any further comments I would be grateful but I suspect this case is 'out of scope' so won't be expecting any.