CGT on shares when purchase price unknown

Vortigern

steampowered wrote: »

Also, aren't you paying income tax on the dividends?

The OP could hold 33600 BT shares without busting the tax-free dividend allowance of £5000?

wraighty

steampowered wrote: »

Holding the entirety of your investment in one share is very high risk.

The shares are only a small part of my investments. I would still prefer to sell them for more than I paid if possible. I don't fancy buying any more shares due to burnt fingers in the past.

System

How can you be concerned about making a loss on the shares and about paying CGT on the shares?

Twopints

Economic wrote: »

How can you be concerned about making a loss on the shares and about paying CGT on the shares?

It's only the ones purchased at the high price that would make a loss, so just sell the ones that were free, making a profit. :beer:

AnotherJoe

wraighty wrote: »

The shares are only a small part of my investments. I would still prefer to sell them for more than I paid if possible. I don't fancy buying any more shares due to burnt fingers in the past.

How long can you wait ? 20 years?
You stand more chance of buying something else and having that grow to more.
If you've had burnt fingers in the past, how do you know these aren't still on fire, to continue with your analogy ?

Malthusian

Twopints wrote: »

It's only the ones purchased at the high price that would make a loss, so just sell the ones that were free, making a profit. :beer:

Post is probably tongue in cheek but for the benefit of those less experienced with shares, it should be reiterated that you can't do this. Unless bed & breakfasting or other special rules apply, you have to take all the shares you've ever bought and average their purchase costs to work out capital gains.

Heedtheadvice

Quite so Malthusian.

If anybody needs further info see post #5

wraighty

Thanks to all for your advice. I managed to get a list of previous sharesave option prices so have a good idea of how many I can sell avoiding CGT.
Dare I ask for suggestions of what shares I might invest in now?

bowlhead99

wraighty wrote: »

Dare I ask for suggestions of what shares I might invest in now?

The only reason for an inexperienced investor such as yourself to take the high risk approach of buying shares in an individual company (rather than to buy shares in an investment fund which collects together your cash with everyone else's and allocates it across tens or hundreds or thousands of individual companies) is if you are getting a sweetener to compensate you for the extreme high risk. Such as, for example, being able to buy the shares below market price and with tax breaks using a sharesave scheme or other incentive plan from your employer.

There are over 2000 companies listed on the London stock exchange. UK is home to under 7% of the world's listed companies by market value in free float. So, there are tens of thousands of choices. There is no point listening to people here or tip sheets saying what companies we think you might like to own, out of tens of thousands of choices. Any one of the companies would still be high risk because it is just one company in one industry in one stock market in one part of the world.

So, forget investing in company shares and only consider investing in funds or investment trusts. There are still thousands of choices and as you can buy one or more in any proportion you like, the overall possibilities give near infinite variation.

Knowing nothing about you, a standard recommendation would be to open an ISA via one of the many fund supermarket platforms, and buy a mixed asset fund which invests your cash globally across asset classes (company shares, a range of company and government bonds, commercial property, other) and industries and regions (UK and other overseas developed markets and emerging markets).

There are many such funds around of varying risk levels. No doubt someone will be along to recommend some of their favourites while you go off and do some reading around the subject so that you can form your own view too.

wraighty

That sounds like a good option for me, many thanks.