VCT - Can I still Claim Tax Relief

thatsfresh

Please can someone help as I have seen various answers online and received different comments from HMRC. I will try and be concise.

I invested in two a VCT’s back in 2004 (Sitka Health Fund VCT and Unicorn AIM VCT) and have not claimed any form of tax relief in relation to them. They were setup for me by my then tax advisor. Over the years Sitka Health Fund become Noble and is now called Proven Growth and Income VCT. Unicorn AIM has remained Unicorn AIM.


Due to the VCT’s restructuring themselves the number of shares I hold has reduced and each time I have been sent a new certificate with my new shareholding:

Unicorn AIM VCT – New certificate issued in Apr 2004 and then March 2010
Proven VCT (Sitka) – New certificate issued in Apr 2004, Apr 2005 and then Jan 2014


Apart from that initial investment in 2004 I have not directly put more money into the VCT's.


Here is my question’s

• How many years can I go back to claim tax relief
• Does the fact that I am issued with a new certificate which has a new registration date, new shareholding etc etc mean I can claim in that new issue year?

Kind Regards


Stuart

bowlhead99

thatsfresh wrote: »

Here is my question’s

• How many years can I go back to claim tax relief
• Does the fact that I am issued with a new certificate which has a new registration date, new shareholding etc etc mean I can claim in that new issue year?

You can amend a tax return yourself within 12 months of the original deadline for filing the return (the original deadline usually being the 31 January following the 5 April when the tax year ended.

After that, you have to write to HMRC requesting "overpayment relief" but you can only claim a refund for up to 4 years after the end of the tax year it related to. So, forget about the income tax relief on a 2004 purchase which could have given you tax relief if you'd asked for it a decade ago, but not any more.

Simply being issued with a new certificate for a name change or share reconstruction as your interest in Noble rolls over into ProVen Health, or ProVen Health merges with ProVen Growth, does not constitute a new subscription that you can claim income tax relief on. And nor does it reopen a decade old bit of activity to a new claim.

Perhaps the smart thing to do would have been to have cashed in and exited prior to the Proven merger and then bought back in at a new fundraising of some other VCT (or even the same VCT after some "time out" to avoid the anti- avoidance rules). But if you didn't, I doubt you can claim anything for the 2014 transaction which is the only activity in the last 4 tax years.

If the 2014 transaction would have been a material amount of potential income tax relief if it were structured as a disposal and new purchase, and you don't want to take the word of an anonymous stranger on the internet, just email the ProVen management to ask the position for an investor who got his ProVen shares by merger in 2014 rather than by direct subscription.

If you've not been paying new cash into these VCTs over the years, just sitting back and enjoying the dividends instead... seems like there's nothing you claim. However, if either of them have some kind of share capital reinvestment scheme so you never get any cash and instead automatically have the dividend proceeds subscribed as a new purchase each year, then potentially you could have been claiming tax relief on those amounts when doing that every year. So there would be a few years in scope for a claim there, potentially.

thatsfresh

Thanks Bowlhead (if I may call you that) for your reply and addressing all of my points AND giving some sound advice. It doesn't feel like I can make a claim as I have been sitting back and pocketing the dividends over the years. Looking forward I think I will look to exiting and buying back into a new VCT. I have some Buy-to-let properties and also work so the tax relief would come in handy to offset the rental income.