Capital Gains Tax & Land Registry

evsue

We sold our half of a rental property to business partners 17 years ago.  We paid capital gains tax to HMRC on the sale of our half to them at the time.  
Our former business partners are now selling the property and have discovered that our names were removed from the title deeds of the house but not from separate title deeds for the garage.
The solicitor currently handling their sale is now asking us to complete a transfer form for the garage to our ex business partners for nil value, so they can sell the garage with the house.  We completely agree that the garage was sold along with the house 17 years ago but if we now dispose of the garage is this going to trigger a CGT liability?

The self assessment return asks if we have disposed of property this financial year which effectively we would be doing as the documentation will be at the current date.  We understand that even a nil cost transaction under normal circumstances does not avoid a CGT charge.   

The house and garage were valued and sold together.  We had no idea there were two sets of title deeds.  

We don’t know what evidence HMRC would accept regarding this situation.

Any advice would be appreciated.  We can’t get through to HMRC by phone (they disconnected the call saying they can’t deal with any calls) and can’t use the HMRC community forum as we can’t register due to the Captcha code not being accepted despite inputting it correctly several times.

user1977

I can't see that it's relevant for tax purposes - it's completion of the transaction which matters, and that happened 17 years ago.

Not sure exactly what you mean though by "the documentation will be at the current date" - I would have thought the completion date ought to be whenever it was 17 years ago, not now? HMRC aren't going to be interested anyway.

evsue

We didn’t realise the TR1 form would state a historic completion date going back to 2007 and that this would be accepted by Land Registry.  Not familiar with the whole process and assumed that completion is deemed to have taken place when all parties sign/exchange the Transfer form we are now being asked to complete.   Many thanks for your response .

propertyrental

evsue said:

We didn’t realise the TR1 form would state a historic completion date going back to 2007 and that this would be accepted by Land Registry.  Not familiar with the whole process and assumed that completion is deemed to have taken place when all parties sign/exchange the Transfer form we are now being asked to complete.   Many thanks for your response .

That's the Exchange date.

The Completion date is whatever date is inserted on the TR1.

user1977

propertyrental said:

evsue said:

We didn’t realise the TR1 form would state a historic completion date going back to 2007 and that this would be accepted by Land Registry.  Not familiar with the whole process and assumed that completion is deemed to have taken place when all parties sign/exchange the Transfer form we are now being asked to complete.   Many thanks for your response .

That's the Exchange date.

The Completion date is whatever date is inserted on the TR1.

No, exchange would be when contracts are exchanged. The TR1 is delivered on the completion date (or would in a normal transaction anyway). Doesn't matter how far in advance it was actually signed.

evsue

Thank you for your replies.  

We were just concerned that HMRC are notified at the point when property is transferred officially with the Land Registry.
However, if in the TR1 form we enter the ‘Date’ field as ‘30/04/2007’ then this would agree with the date we actually completed the sale, as per the completion statement which we received from our solicitor 17 years ago.

user1977

evsue said:

We were just concerned that HMRC are notified at the point when property is transferred officially with the Land Registry.

I'm not aware of HMRC being routinely notified at all. Though obviously they can access the info if they were interested. But even if they did, you appear to have an adequate explanation for them.