CGT query (moving shares value to my wife)

Underkat

Hi. I’ve searched quite a bit for the answer but unable to clearly find one.

Background;
I’ve recently invested in shares in Halifax share dealing account. They started doing much better than expected so I moved what I could into my Halifax Shares ISA. I was left with several thousand £ which has now turned into more than £20k. If the value stayed below £20k I planned to do a Bed & ISA in the next financial year to avoid CGT but it does not look like that’ll be possible.

I understand I would be able to transfer/gift shares from my share dealing account to my wife’s share dealing account so then she could do a Bed & ISA also, HOWEVER this will apparently take 10 working days and I fear given the stocks increase of late we’ll miss out quite a bit of potential gains. 

So my question is if I sell shares and withdraw the money into my account and use that to fund my wife’s purchase of the same monetary amount will that incur or avoid CGT?

Apologies if I waffled or explained the situation badly. Many thanks for looking.

Jeremy535897

If you sell shares you hold personally (in a share dealing account or otherwise) you will make a capital gain, which by limiting the number of shares sold you can manage to keep within your annual exemption. If you give the proceeds to your wife, and she buys the same shares via her dealing account, that is a separate issue.

noh

If you transfer shares from your HDSL shared dealing account to your wife's HDSL account that will not incur CGT as it is a transfer between spouses. If you sell them from your account then that is a disposal for CGT purposes and is potentially liable to CGT.
What's is the problem transferring them to your wife's account? The transfer may take a maximum of 10 days but you are not out of the market or are you thinking their value will drop in the next 10 days?

Underkat

noh said:

If you transfer shares from your HDSL shared dealing account to your wife's HDSL account that will not incur CGT as it is a transfer between spouses. If you sell them from your account then that is a disposal for CGT purposes and is potentially liable to CGT.
What's is the problem transferring them to your wife's account? The transfer may take a maximum of 10 days but you are not out of the market or are you thinking their value will drop in the next 10 days?

Ok that’s good to know. I’ve done a bit of what I’ve said so have used up some of my CGT allowance but that’s fine. Happy to learn from my mistakes.

If the transfer takes 10 days are my shares out of the market? Or do they get transferred as a quantity of shares, for example;
A- if I have 1000 shares to transfer my wife’s account will have 1000 added? (Regardless of any movement in the share price)
OR
B- As part of the transfer my 1000 shares are sold for a price of £1 each and when they get around to adding them to my wife’s account if the price has gone up I.e. £2, only 500 shares will be added to her account?

sorry if I’ve missed anything obvious. Many thanks.

Jeremy535897

You need to ask Halifax what the mechanisms are for transferring shares between share dealing accounts. If it is a book entry moving shares from one portfolio to another, there would be no sale, and therefore why would there be exposure to the market or any dealing costs? If there is a sale, presumably the transfer would be treated as a sale by you, a gift of cash to your wife, and a purchase in her share dealing account, which would crystallise a capital gain?

noh

Underkat said:

noh said:

If you transfer shares from your HDSL shared dealing account to your wife's HDSL account that will not incur CGT as it is a transfer between spouses. If you sell them from your account then that is a disposal for CGT purposes and is potentially liable to CGT.
What's is the problem transferring them to your wife's account? The transfer may take a maximum of 10 days but you are not out of the market or are you thinking their value will drop in the next 10 days?

Ok that’s good to know. I’ve done a bit of what I’ve said so have used up some of my CGT allowance but that’s fine. Happy to learn from my mistakes.

If the transfer takes 10 days are my shares out of the market? Or do they get transferred as a quantity of shares, for example;
A- if I have 1000 shares to transfer my wife’s account will have 1000 added? (Regardless of any movement in the share price)
OR
B- As part of the transfer my 1000 shares are sold for a price of £1 each and when they get around to adding them to my wife’s account if the price has gone up I.e. £2, only 500 shares will be added to her account?

sorry if I’ve missed anything obvious. Many thanks.

They are transferred as a quantity of shares. If you hold 1000 shares in your dealing account then 1000 shares will be transferred to your wifes dealing account. There are no costs involved.
Nothing is sold and repurchsed therefore you are not out of the market at all.
Behind the scenes. Halifax Sharedealing hold all the shares in a nominee account, everyones shares are pooled together.
They keep a record of how many shares are allocated to each customer. when you do a transfer all they do is ammend their record to reflect the new beneficial ownership.
I have transferred shares held in my HDSL dealing account to my wifes HDSL dealing account in this way previously.

Underkat

noh said:

Underkat said:

noh said:

If you transfer shares from your HDSL shared dealing account to your wife's HDSL account that will not incur CGT as it is a transfer between spouses. If you sell them from your account then that is a disposal for CGT purposes and is potentially liable to CGT.
What's is the problem transferring them to your wife's account? The transfer may take a maximum of 10 days but you are not out of the market or are you thinking their value will drop in the next 10 days?

Ok that’s good to know. I’ve done a bit of what I’ve said so have used up some of my CGT allowance but that’s fine. Happy to learn from my mistakes.

If the transfer takes 10 days are my shares out of the market? Or do they get transferred as a quantity of shares, for example;
A- if I have 1000 shares to transfer my wife’s account will have 1000 added? (Regardless of any movement in the share price)
OR
B- As part of the transfer my 1000 shares are sold for a price of £1 each and when they get around to adding them to my wife’s account if the price has gone up I.e. £2, only 500 shares will be added to her account?

sorry if I’ve missed anything obvious. Many thanks.

They are transferred as a quantity of shares. If you hold 1000 shares in your dealing account then 1000 shares will be transferred to your wifes dealing account. There are no costs involved.
Nothing is sold and repurchsed therefore you are not out of the market at all.
Behind the scenes. Halifax Sharedealing hold all the shares in a nominee account, everyones shares are pooled together.
They keep a record of how many shares are allocated to each customer. when you do a transfer all they do is ammend their record to reflect the new beneficial ownership.
I have transferred shares held in my HDSL dealing account to my wifes HDSL dealing account in this way previously.

Many thanks for confirming this. That's awesome news. I'll get onto Halifax to begin the transfer of the shares ASAP and sort out what I need to before next financial year

noh

You can print out the form from your online dealing account.
Log in then select your dealing account. Select transfers from the right hand menu then "Transfer shares between two Halifax Sharedealing accounts"
Fill in the boxes print it out, sign it and post to HSDL.