Santander Shares and my tax return

anaita

anyone had a luck selling there shares and have to pay Spanish tax after,as I wont to sell mine as I have only 100 worth £300 and wont to know as now I have been told by Santander that if I wont to sell I will have to pay Spanish tax.

MarkCarnage

anaita wrote: »

anyone had a luck selling there shares and have to pay Spanish tax after,as I wont to sell mine as I have only 100 worth £300 and wont to know as now I have been told by Santander that if I wont to sell I will have to pay Spanish tax.

You've already posted this on another threat in the ISA forum.

If you got these shares as a result of Santander buying Alliance & Leicester, you are looking at making a loss on sale of them as far as the Spanish tax situation is concerned (they are only interested in the SAN share price then, not whether you got the shares 'free' or not). So no issue then.

Even if you did make a gain, it is likely to be minimal and as noted in my other reply, I doubt very much if the Spanish tax authorities are bothered if you complete this form or not.

One other point, if the shares are held via a nominee service such as Equiniti, I can't see how the Spanish authorities would ever know who the beneficial owner was anyway? I transferred some SAN shares recently from Equiniti to another platform with a nominee account and sold them thereafter. I didn't even know there was a Spanish tax 'requirement'. haven't done anything about it and don't intend to. My holding was quite a lot more than 100 shares.

Robert_McGeddon

I didn't even know there was a Spanish tax 'requirement'. haven't done anything about it and don't intend to.

Ditto,

I received a Santander dividend cheque yesterday. From Santander UK plc. Spanish witholding tax (at 19%) had been deducted. It's not immediately clear to me why a UK plc is even deducting a foreign tax.

MarkCarnage

Although the cheque will be drawn on the UK subsidiary, the dividend has always been declared and paid by the Spanish parent company.

Similarly, the home country witholding tax will be applied on it, which in most cases, and certainly for Spain, will be covered by a double taxation treaty with the UK to ensure no double deduction.

It explains how to enter it when you complete your tax return. If your total dividends from overseas companies is greater than £300 (i think) you need to complete a separate schedule on your tax return.

Also, your query is about the dividend income, whereas the question above is about capital gains. HMRC are very unlikely to be interested in small capital gains well below the UK exemption level of £12,000, whilst dividend income may be a different matter particularly overseas income above the threshold as outlined above.