Capital Loss

sgthammer

New poster. Please be welcoming.

I inherited some shares which I later sold. It was all free money as far as I was concerned, but now that I come to do my tax return I realise that on paper I made a loss for CGT purposes against the market value at acquisition.

The "loss" is only about £4.50 though! Am I required to declare this? I know that capital losses can be carried forward for a certain length of time to offset against gains in later years; but for such a small amount it hardly seems worth printing off the form. The only thing I'm concerned about is that I might be assumed to be hiding profits if i don't.

Nicholas-bloody-Parsons

HMRC will not be interested if you dont owe anything.

I dont believe you have to tell them anything unless the shares sold were worth more than £10k (last time i looked).

talexuser

You have to tell them if the shares are worth more than £10600 above the price you paid for them (or the price when they were given to you).

ColdIron

You can tell them if you want the £4.50 to offset your CGT gain next year

Biggles

Technically, you have to tell them only if the total proceeds from share sales in the year were over £42,400 (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cgt/intro/report-gain.htm#1).

Otherwise, the tax you save on future gains by reporting the loss would barely save the postage.