How to find original share prices for CGT

ender4

Hi, 

My dad bought some shares in my name many decades ago. He originally had them as paper certificates, then a couple of different online portals, and now in Fidelity.  

He has passed them over to me to take control. I want to sell them and get the funds into my ISA (possibly re-buy the same shares again if i think they hold investment value).

When i sell them, i'll need to declare CGT on my self-assessment. But how do i find out what share price they were bought at to calculate the value?  They were mainly the privatised industries bought at IPO, or 'building societies who gave free shares'.

National Grid
SSE
Severn Trent
Lloyds Bank (originally Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society shares)
Barclays Bank (originally Woolwich Building Society shares)
Santander Bank (originally Abbey National shares).

Keep_pedalling

if you know the purchase dates it’s quite easy to find the closing price on those days.

You may not have too much of a gain (if any)  to declare with all those bank shares in there 

Hoenir

What's the value of the holdings now? 

EthicsGradient

When you say "he has passed them over to me to take control", what do you mean? If he gave them to you (ie they've been transferred from his Fidelity account to an account of yours), then he is liable for the capital gain from the date he bought them, until the date on which ownership was transferred to you, and they get valued at the market rate on that day (which can be checked with some online sites like Yahoo Finance, or the London Stock Exchange, for recent dates - note that you can't rely on these far back, because it's not clear how mergers, company splits, share reorganisations and so on are accounted for by them). Your liability for CGT will be only from that date until you sell them. 

If he got shares in a demutualisation without paying anything, then his cost was zero, and his gain was the value of the shares when he gave them to you. For privatisation shares like National Grid etc., you'll need to find out how he obtained them - was it as a customer who got an allowance of shares (in which case you can probably track down the total he paid for them, possibly over a few 'tranches'). Some kind of evidence that he got them like that would be preferable (though that'll quite possibly be the lowest total price they've been, so it'll show the highest gain anyway).

boingy

EthicsGradient said:

When you say "he has passed them over to me to take control", what do you mean? 

You missed the opening sentence:

My dad bought some shares in my name many decades ago

They have always been in the OP's name so the CGT liability is theirs.

ender4

Hoenir said:

What's the value of the holdings now? 

Around £23k.

ender4

EthicsGradient said:

When you say "he has passed them over to me to take control", what do you mean? If he gave them to you (ie they've been transferred from his Fidelity account to an account of yours), then he is liable for the capital gain from the date he bought them, until the date on which ownership was transferred to you, and they get valued at the market rate on that day (which can be checked with some online sites like Yahoo Finance, or the London Stock Exchange, for recent dates - note that you can't rely on these far back, because it's not clear how mergers, company splits, share reorganisations and so on are accounted for by them). Your liability for CGT will be only from that date until you sell them. 

If he got shares in a demutualisation without paying anything, then his cost was zero, and his gain was the value of the shares when he gave them to you. For privatisation shares like National Grid etc., you'll need to find out how he obtained them - was it as a customer who got an allowance of shares (in which case you can probably track down the total he paid for them, possibly over a few 'tranches'). Some kind of evidence that he got them like that would be preferable (though that'll quite possibly be the lowest total price they've been, so it'll show the highest gain anyway).

Bought in my name originally. 

Good point about the free shares - even though the share price was say £1 per share, but if I got them for free, then do I count the capital gains from zero to current value? Or from value on date I got them for free?

For the IPO shares, he applied to buy shares at the IPO price. 

boingy

Sadly, you count the CG from zero for the free shares.
If you are not desperate for the money I'd suggest selling them across several years just up to your CGT limit each year. It will take some years but will almost certainly yield the most money.

BFCkingsok

I have shares in Royal Dutch Shell which came about on disposal of some privatisation shares (possibly  B Gas but not sure)
I'm about to dispose of the shares but how do I value the cost of the shares for Capital Gains Tax