Stocks & Shares ISAs

Nardge

bowlhead99 wrote: »

When you are considering investing money into a product which can lose 40-50% over the course of a year, and you have several more weeks before the end of the tax year, there is really no need to be hasty and open it today just because you have some self imposed deadline.

For example, your hasty review of what people were saying on forums led you to think that many investors would invest in five vanguard lifestrategy products at the same time, while the reality is that if you scoured the archives you would be unlikely to find more than three or four usernames claiming they had invested in five lifestrategy funds concurrentlly - while by contrast you'd find dozens or hundreds of people who have invested or advocated investing in *one* of this type of mixed asset fund.

Now you're going to consider looking at links provided but have pretty much made your mind up, even though it's a change of mind from what you were thinking first thing this morning. Maybe you would change your mind again if you slept on it.

If you are putting in an initial few thousand to use up your allowance but know you can change it later - and will be paying in several thousand a year going forward anyway - it doesn't really matter which of the funds you pick in the short term. But you might as well get it right, if you're embarking on a long term plan. So there probably isn't any reason for you to rush to open an account on some random rainy Thursday in the middle of March unless you're really happy with your decision.

Good luck with your investing journey.

Yes you're right. I must have picked up on the wrong threads/posts too soon, where people were comparing their percentage gains in each pot at length. Since that's what I read first, sadly it'll have had the 'primacy' effect no doubt.

By "poor construction" I also understood there had been inadvertent inherent 'self-contradiction'.

Admittedly, my question should have been:
'I feel I can take a lot of risk, I'm wanting to access greater gains and so feel I will go for the 80%
Before I do that, can anyone advise why some people are investing into all the pots simultaneously?'

At the back of my mind was the knowledge that I could always move things around at a later date as indicated, as correctly sensed by yourself. You (and others) are right though, I should be informedly sure whether I want 60%, 80%, or perhaps a mixture of the two, rather than pursuing a time-urgent course.

With Kind Regards

Malthusian

If you're worried about getting your ISA in on time, do it now but invest in cash. Then you can take all year to decide which you are most comfortable with if you want.

saltire

A bit confused on which option to use regarding some shares i hold .
1=Transfer to my wife as a gift , she would need to open her own share account .
2= Put any gains made into a share isa .


The bank which i use to buy the shares were of no help at all when asking them what to do .

AnotherJoe

saltire wrote: »

A bit confused on which option to use regarding some shares i hold .
1=Transfer to my wife as a gift , she would need to open her own share account .
2= Put any gains made into a share isa .

The bank which i use to buy the shares were of no help at all when asking them what to do .

Thats because then they would have been giving you financial advice which they probably arent licensed to do or not without you paying them money and doing a full fact find.

Which course of action would be best would depend upon your and your full financial and personal circumstances. About which you've stated nothing. We don't even know what your motive is in doing this.Tax avoidance? Inheritance issues? Pensions? Mortgage? Long term? Short term? Nope, I cant read your mind to work these ones out.



And thats just Q1. I dont even understand Q2. Why would you only put "gains made" into an S&S ISA?

saltire

Tax avoidance is not a word i like to use , but i hope some one on here can give me some sound advice .
This would be shortish term i pay 40% tax at the moment and am not sure if i can just transfer any gains made into a share isa or do i have to transfer the whole lot in one go .
My better half only works one day a week so does not pay a lot of tax so the option of gifting her my shares is another option i read about .

bowlhead99

saltire wrote: »

Tax avoidance is not a word i like to use , but i hope some one on here can give me some sound advice .
This would be shortish term i pay 40% tax at the moment and am not sure if i can just transfer any gains made into a share isa or do i have to transfer the whole lot in one go .
My better half only works one day a week so does not pay a lot of tax so the option of gifting her my shares is another option i read about .

If you gift her your shares and she sells them, then they keep the same base cost for capital gains purpose so when she sells them, the gains made (difference between her sales proceeds and your cost of buying them originally) will be a capital gain for her and not for you. If she is a basic rate taxpayer her capital gains tax rate will only be 10%, whereas you as a higher rate taxpayer will have a 20% rate on capital gains.

You both have an annual capital, gains exemption of £11,700 to set against the first gains you make in a tax year so it is likely to be quite efficient for you to sell some of the shares yourself (enough of them to use up your own annual exemption) and then transfer a bunch of the other shares that you want to sell to her so that she can sell them (and use her own exemption against some of them while paying a lower rate of tax on the others).

Once you have the sales proceeds, you can use them to fund an ISA each (for you and for her at up to £20k each for a total of £40k. Whatever you buy inside the ISAs to hold as investments going forward will be ignored by the taxman as it's outside the scope of both capital gains tax and income tax on any interest/dividends.

AnotherJoe

saltire wrote: »

Tax avoidance is not a word i like to use , but i hope some one on here can give me some sound advice . Nothing wrong with that at all. Its evasion thats frowned upon.
This would be shortish term i pay 40% tax at the moment and am not sure if i can just transfer any gains made into a share isa or do i have to transfer the whole lot in one go .
My better half only works one day a week so does not pay a lot of tax so the option of gifting her my shares is another option i read about .

I think you are working on the misunderstanding that you can take gains and put them in an ISA and thus not pay anything on those gains.

It doesn't work like that. At all. Its only gains once they are in an ISA, that dont count.

To avoid lots of back and forth, what did you buy the shares for and what are they worth now?

saltire

I bought 10k's worth and they are now worth 17.k , i have a few other shares that have made 0% but i hope in the not too distant future that they will rise .These are the shares that i was going to gift to my wife.

masonic

saltire wrote: »

I bought 10k's worth and they are now worth 17.k , i have a few other shares that have made 0% but i hope in the not too distant future that they will rise .These are the shares that i was going to gift to my wife.

So your gain is £7, which is below the annual CGT allowance. Presuming you don't have other capital gains in this tax year, you can sell them, put the money in a S&S ISA and buy them back if your plan is to continue holding them. Or if your provider has a more joined up Bed & ISA process, use that.

AnotherJoe

saltire wrote: »

I bought 10k's worth and they are now worth 17.k , i have a few other shares that have made 0% but i hope in the not too distant future that they will rise .These are the shares that i was going to gift to my wife.

Thats ambiguous. Which shares? The ones that rose or the ones that didn't? Not that it matters as you wont have to pay CGT (assuming you had no other gains this year) or even report the sale.
If you xfer* them into a ISA then that will crystallise the £7k of gains and you neednt be concerned aboutw hat happens in teh future paying CGT.


* you dont really xfer them, you can "bed and ISA" which really is just a sale, cash transfer and purchase but i can be done as one transaction with most brokers.