Advice regarding Tesco Share Consolidation Tax options?

Svenena

Posting for a friend who's waiting for their account to be approved.

I've seen all the posts querying why and what it all means. Frankly I understand the reasoning and I think the fact that they openly admitted on a call that they missed the boat with helping colleagues understand this and flagging the potential impact of tax on any of their examples is super shocking.

I've worked for Tesco all my life, always taking the opportunity to buy cheap shares and keeping them for the future to use for a house deposit. I'm just an office worker that has been there for 20 years, not one of the managers or exec and the impact on me is that despite 2k allowance I will now have a £5k tax bill which is more than 2 months of salary (on higher rate tax) for something I will not benefit from at all. 

What I would like to ask the forum are about are the various options that I should go away and explore to mitigate where possible and make my money work a little smarter.

1) Stocks and shares ISA clearly the preferred option to limit tax but the timing to open one and facilitate Bed and ISA from either my certificated or electronically held shares does not appear to be feasible by Friday 12th. I am aware that a lot of advisors recommend looking at managed funds to minimise risk however this comes with greater costs too and I am intending to try and buy a house in a year or two (which I'd have sold some shares to facilitate). If I only wanted to keep the ISA as my Tesco holding, is there a view on likely rates or good companies (I'll self manage and have v limited trades). Equiniti offer through EQI which is a new service launched last month - any initial impressions of it vs competitors? I will need to offset the normal dividend tax impact against the cost of opening and operating this also.

2) Avoid the dividend. In theory I could simply cash the (full/partial) shares in before 12th and then not get the dividend. Have to be wary of Capital Gains Tax allowance though so look to identify how much can be cashed up the 12k limit. I can then hold the cash going forward instead or move that to an ISA/managed fund perhaps depending on ability to use it for house next year or so. I have also identified that if I sold shares and then purchased the same value back again under bed and breakfast, no CGT would be liable. I would of course incur relevant transaction fees for selling, buying and the stamp duty. I assume the point that ordinary shares will change from 5p would not directly impact this? The only risk might be that the share price increases significantly but would be willing to accept that risk on the basis this is designed to maintain the current limit.

3) I have also decided not to touch my maturing SAYE until after this has completed, though will aim to move it into an ISA as within 90 days it does not accrue any CGT. Once I have identified the right ISA and company to hold it with.

4) I clearly would benefit not only from the wonderful advice of forumites but on arranging professional advice. I am looking online but nearly everyone focuses on selling managed funds to raise commission or charging for assistance with completing tax returns. Is there a certain term I should use and look out for to help find the person that will be able to specifically help me work through each of the options and impacts on CGT, dividend tax and perhaps knowledge of share consolidations and dealing fees/processes? In an ideal world that person later in the year would help me strategise buying a house using either savings, shares or an offer from parents to remortgage (obviously conscious of the risk on them)

I am fairly switched on normally but this is all new and with Covid and the time pressure it's looking a bit tricky to get my head round so all thoughts and pointers appreciated to try and mitigate. Otherwise it'll just be a case of leave it and cash in some shares/savings next year to spend 5k on something I don't benefit from. If only they'd gone down the buy back route or the financial investors were incurring the same taxes eh!

Anyway, thanks all!