CGT

piedwagtail140

Trying to work out potential CGT gain on Shell plc, Nat Grid and Centrica shares. Bought British Gas shares back in the original Ask Sid flotation and I think over the years I have accumulated these 3 companies as a result of de mergers, take overs from the original British Gas shares. How do I work out the original cost of these 3 company shares? Any help appreciated.

Reaper

How much are they worth? If not too much and you have not used up your capital gains allowance (£3000 this year) then the easiest thing to do is to give the purchase price as zero when you sell. You can sell some this year and more in the next tax year after April 5th

Beddie

Reaper said:

How much are they worth? If not too much and you have not used up your capital gains allowance (£3000 this year) then the easiest thing to do is to give the purchase price as zero when you sell. You can sell some this year and more in the next tax year after April 5th

I thought the same - sell £3k worth per tax year then there is no CGT to pay. If, however, they want to sell more quickly, then it's actually very difficult to find exact prices going back so far.

wmb194

piedwagtail140 said:

Trying to work out potential CGT gain on Shell plc, Nat Grid and Centrica shares. Bought British Gas shares back in the original Ask Sid flotation and I think over the years I have accumulated these 3 companies as a result of de mergers, take overs from the original British Gas shares. How do I work out the original cost of these 3 company shares? Any help appreciated.

Do you know your original allocation? It shouldn't be too hard to find the IPO price and multiply it by your allocation to give you an overall figure. This assumes of course that you haven't bought any additional or taken scrip dividends.

piedwagtail140

 wmb194 said:

piedwagtail140 said:

Trying to work out potential CGT gain on Shell plc, Nat Grid and Centrica shares. Bought British Gas shares back in the original Ask Sid flotation and I think over the years I have accumulated these 3 companies as a result of de mergers, take overs from the original British Gas shares. How do I work out the original cost of these 3 company shares? Any help appreciated.

Do you know your original allocation? It shouldn't be too hard to find the IPO price and multiply it by your allocation to give you an overall figure. This assumes of course that you haven't bought any additional or taken scrip dividends.

Thanks for your replies, we’re not talking big numbers here. I think the original British Gas buy was 400 @ 135p

Regards the CGT of £3k I could split the sales across 2 tax years as the Shell shares (150) alone take it over the allowance if using a purchase price of zero. So along with Centrica (445) and Nat Grid (29) as suggested splitting over 2 yrs but I would have thought there was a way of finding a ‘purchase value’? 

wmb194

piedwagtail140 said:

 wmb194 said:

piedwagtail140 said:

Trying to work out potential CGT gain on Shell plc, Nat Grid and Centrica shares. Bought British Gas shares back in the original Ask Sid flotation and I think over the years I have accumulated these 3 companies as a result of de mergers, take overs from the original British Gas shares. How do I work out the original cost of these 3 company shares? Any help appreciated.

Do you know your original allocation? It shouldn't be too hard to find the IPO price and multiply it by your allocation to give you an overall figure. This assumes of course that you haven't bought any additional or taken scrip dividends.

Thanks for your replies, we’re not talking big numbers here. I think the original British Gas buy was 400 @ 135p

Regards the CGT of £3k I could split the sales across 2 tax years as the Shell shares (150) alone take it over the allowance if using a purchase price of zero. So along with Centrica (445) and Nat Grid (29) as suggested splitting over 2 yrs but I would have thought there was a way of finding a ‘purchase value’? 

If you do some Googling you should be able to find the demerger terms and initial share prices for Centrica and NG. and it shouldn’t be too hard to find the takeover terms by Shell of BG. NG. might get complicated though with all the special dividends (return of capital?) and share splits. It gets more complicated if you’ve ever purchased new shares or had dividends reinvested or paid as scrip (additional shares).

DRS1

Would the company report and accounts have a note setting out the share capital history - showing demergers share splits etc and helping with any adjustment to the base cost?  BP used to do a shareholder information sheet which set it all out for BP - doing the sums when I sold my BP shares was still hard labour.  I don't know if British Gas did anything similar.

You'll have to go back to what you originally paid - and make sure you count in any instalments (as I recall the Sid share purchases allowed for instalments and free shares) - and take it from there.

poseidon1

For those interested in reconstructing the CGT history of British Gas and subsequent demerged companies and bonus issues, see pdf link below.

To be noted it also includes the indexation factors ( inflation uplift to base cost) which was available until April 1998.


https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/140551/download

DRS1

poseidon1 said:

For those interested in reconstructing the CGT history of British Gas and subsequent demerged companies and bonus issues, see pdf link below.

To be noted it also includes the indexation factors ( inflation uplift to base cost) which was available until April 1998.


https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/140551/download

BP was a walk in the park compared to that.

super_reds

If you are married you can gift some to your spouse to utilise their CGT annual allowance as well.