SIP Shares After Leaving Company

drlabman

I've been contributing to my company's SIP scheme for the last 7 years or so but have now left the company. Obviously, I haven't held all the shares for the full qualifying period so some tax and NI is due. I've been informed by the administrators what the taxable values of the shares is - ~£7500 - and that tax of ~£2500 is payable together with ~£200 NI. When I queried the tax payable they said that it was because they have to use tax code 0T, but that I can reclaim any overpayment from HMRC. Is this normal?

I haven't decided yet whether I'll sell or keep the shares (but there is
a dividend due in June so I'm leaning towards keeping them at least until then). I'm by no means an expert in shareholding but I do have shares (inherited) in a couple of other companies, one set of which (Aviva) is held by Computershare. I'm not even sure what they're called - registrars, nominee account holders? If I decide to keep the SIP shares, can I have them transferred directly to someone like Computershare? I only mention Computershare because they hold my Aviva shares so I'm registered with them already - I'm sure others are available. Are there advantages other than not having to hold a paper certificate myself?

Thanks in advance for any clarification.

NordicNoir

drlabman wrote: »

I've been contributing to my company's SIP scheme for the last 7 years or so but have now left the company. Obviously, I haven't held all the shares for the full qualifying period so some tax and NI is due. I've been informed by the administrators what the taxable values of the shares is - ~£7500 - and that tax of ~£2500 is payable together with ~£200 NI. When I queried the tax payable they said that it was because they have to use tax code 0T, but that I can reclaim any overpayment from HMRC. Is this normal? Yes. As you have left the employment and been issued with a P45, HMRC require that any payments made after leaving are taxed using a tax code of 0T.

I haven't decided yet whether I'll sell or keep the shares (but there is
a dividend due in June so I'm leaning towards keeping them at least until then). I'm by no means an expert in shareholding but I do have shares (inherited) in a couple of other companies, one set of which (Aviva) is held by Computershare. I'm not even sure what they're called - registrars, nominee account holders? If I decide to keep the SIP shares, can I have them transferred directly to someone like Computershare? I only mention Computershare because they hold my Aviva shares so I'm registered with them already - I'm sure others are available. Are there advantages other than not having to hold a paper certificate myself? It depends. If you have them held in an account, you can sell them more quickly than if you keep them in certificate form. Some brokers/platforms will charge you a fee just to hold the shares, as well as a transaction fee initially, so make sure you read all of the fine details!

Thanks in advance for any clarification.

Please see the comments above.

drlabman

Thanks for the info.

I'm slowly getting to grips with this. I hadn't appreciated that there's a difference between share registrars and nominee accounts. Am I right in thinking that a company only has one registrar? If I understand correctly, I see my Aviva shares via Computershare because they're Aviva's registrar, not because they are the nominees for the my shares (well, maybe they are, I don't know).

I believe the registrar for BAE Systems is Equiniti, so if I don't do anything else and end up with a paper certificate, the shares will be registered with Equiniti in my name, and as long as I have an Equiniti account I'll be able to see them (but that doesn't mean Equiniti are holding them in a nominee account).

Am I right?

If I wanted, I presume I could have Equiniti, or any other company for that matter, hold them in a nominee account for me - and I would do this by effectively "giving" them the shares (and then I don't hold the share certificate).