How do I find out how much we paid shares?

drunknmunky

Hello all.

I'm looking at selling some of my mum's shares. She holds shares in a several companies with a total combined value just hitting 6 figures. The first few shares she purchased were in the late 90's and the dividends have been reinvested to purchase new shares ever since.

I'm aware of the CGT allowance of £11000 & I'm mindful that her gain doesn't go over this. The only issue is for the majority of companies, we don't have any paperwork to show how much she paid for the shares, all we have are the share certificates themselves.

Is there a way for me to find how much my mum would have paid for the shares in a particular company on a particular date?

Thanks!

Apodemus

Unless the shares have been consolidated (or new certificates issued for some reason) the certificates should be dated. If so, it is fairly easy to look up the share price at that date an use that value as a proxy for the purchase price. It won't be completely accurate and it won't show that actual costs of purchase, but it will be close enough to use for calculating CGT on any sales.

Malthusian

Yahoo Finance is good for quickly looking up old share prices (go to the share and look under Historical Data), other websites are available.

As the shares have been reinvested, ideally you also want to know how much was reinvested each year. If she has scrip statements or certificates for the handful of new shares purchased each year this will tell you how much you can add to the purchase price. Failing that, you can look up how much the company paid out in pence per share each year and multiply by the number of shares.

She should be using her capital gains allowance every year by selling the maximum possible without creating a gain and repurchasing them within a stocks and shares ISA (assuming they are publicly traded). After repeating this process for a number of years you won't have to worry about CGT.