Company SAYE share scheme maturing

Minitaur_33

Hi All, new to the forum so take it easy please
I have a company share scheme which matures next year. I believe it is a PAYE scheme that allowed me to lock in a share price at the start of the 5 year term and then buy them at that price when it matures. The share price has doubled and fingers crossed it stays this way or improves.
Money is tight and this will be have a massive impact on our finances even if it is "only" a few thousand pounds.
I have read moving them in to an ISA is a way to avoid CGT. We do not have any ISA as it stands.
I did check the forum but similar question was partially answered 5 years ago, so have things changed?
We could really do with accessing the money almost straight away, so the ISA is really just an attempt to avoid CGT.
So to my actual question...
Can I just setup an easy access ISA and transfer the shares or value of share in to it?
Do I need to sell shares first then put the money in the ISA (I've read 90 days somewhere)?
Can I actually avoid the CGT this way legally?
Financially the savviest thing I've done is this share scheme! So I would really appreciate a degree of hand holding on this one. Assume I know nothing (I have tried my best to find things out, but as with anything financial, the government makes it incredibly complex)
Thank you in advance for any support/advice you can provide.

artyboy

You need to open a stocks and shares ISA and instruct the SAYE scheme administrator to transfer the shares directly into it. When I did this, I used Interactive Investor and it went very smoothly. They will want a 'letter of appropriation' from your scheme administrator (to demonstrate it's a qualifying scheme transfer), but once the shares are in the ISA, you can sell them with no tax liability.

Brie

Yes they can be transferred to an ISA within 90 days of maturing.  Just have a look too though at what fees you might incur for the shares being in the ISA or for withdrawals.  I'm not too familiar with them myself so don't have any direct knowledge of how they work.

Meanwhile - from the official gov site.....
Tax and Employee Share Schemes: Save As You Earn (SAYE) - GOV.UK

refluxer

Minitaur_33 said:

I have a company share scheme which matures next year. I believe it is a PAYE scheme that allowed me to lock in a share price at the start of the 5 year term and then buy them at that price when it matures. The share price has doubled and fingers crossed it stays this way or improves.
Money is tight and this will be have a massive impact on our finances even if it is "only" a few thousand pounds.

Presumably you mean SAYE ? If it's only a few thousand pound's-worth, then it might be worth doing a few rough calculations to see whether you're likely to be liable for capital gains tax first.

The CGT allowance for this tax year is £3,000 but that's profit so, as you know the purchase price, you should be able to work out how much profit you'd make if you sold the lot today (as a worse-case scenario). If you stand to make more than £3,000 profit, then it would make sense to explore the options which would remove that tax liability, particularly as the tax rate almost doubled at the recent budget, from 10% to 18% (for basic-rate tax payers). If your scheme isn't due to mature until next year and the share price changes then this calculation will also change, of course.

If you don't intend to sell the lot before the end of this tax year though and think you might sell in batches, then just bear in mind you can make up to £3,000 profit each tax year without paying any CGT moving forward. This limit may change in the future though (it's more likely to decrease than increase, if what's happened in recent years is anything to go by).

FWIW, I paid into company SAYE schemes for a number of years in the past and, in retrospect, now regret not paying them into an ISA when they matured, but that's because (1) I've held on to a lot of the shares and (2) the price has risen considerably. In fairness to my decision at the time, the CGT allowance was much higher (between £10-12k during the 2010s) and the rate for basic rate tax payers (10%) was lower than it is now, meaning that I thought I'd never be liable for CGT or I'd get round it by selling in batches. Hindsight is a wonderful thing ! My circumstances might be very different to yours though, so what works for some may not work for others.

This government site link is a useful introduction to CGT and there's bound to be a guide on MSE too : https://www.gov.uk/capital-gains-tax