Capital gains tax share price on transferred shares to spouse ??

Forever_Red

I’ve searched everywhere for an answer and not found one - so here goes.

My wife has been buying shares using the company sharesave scheme where she works and they are held in an Equiniti corporate nominee account. She has acquired over 500 over the years, with each year having a different exercise price. The first ones were approx £39 per share and each following year were approx £35, £68, £47, £58 and £69. The share price is currently at £111.

If she transfers 250 shares over to me, so we can use both CGT allowances, Equiniti will open up a new account and transfer them to me for free, but for capital gains tax purposes, how do I know what the original share price was when I come to sell them?

Equiniti say my wife’s shares are all held in one account and they can’t differentiate between the cheapest ones to the dearest ones. I asked if they could transfer the £39 & £47 shares over to me so I’d know the prices but he said they couldn’t, they’d just transfer over 250 shares.

Surely there is a way that I could find out the prices of the shares they send over or do they just have a pot of 500 shares and work out the average cost of the shares?

What base share price am I supposed to use when working out how many to sell so I stay below the CGT threshold?

Thanks 

ForeverRed

Hoenir

The shares your wife has acquired are pooled. The purchase price is the average per share. That's your base cost. 

Forever_Red

Hoenir said:

The shares your wife has acquired are pooled. The purchase price is the average per share. That's your base cost. 

So if her total shares held in this corporate nominee account are 582 and the total cost of the shares were £28,634 then the average share price would be £49.20 regardless of which account sold them. So we’d both use that figure when we come to work out the CGT?

TheGreenFrog

Forever_Red said:

Hoenir said:

The shares your wife has acquired are pooled. The purchase price is the average per share. That's your base cost. 

So if her total shares held in this corporate nominee account are 582 and the total cost of the shares were £28,634 then the average share price would be £49.20 regardless of which account sold them. So we’d both use that figure when we come to work out the CGT?

Yes.  The transfer (i.e. gift) of shares from your wife to you is not a chargeable event for capital gains tax purposes and you inherit her base cost for those shares (which as @Hoenir says is the average cost).

Hoenir

Forever_Red said:

Hoenir said:

The shares your wife has acquired are pooled. The purchase price is the average per share. That's your base cost. 

So if her total shares held in this corporate nominee account are 582 and the total cost of the shares were £28,634 then the average share price would be £49.20 regardless of which account sold them. So we’d both use that figure when we come to work out the CGT?

Yes. When the shares are transfered out then you will need to reduce the total value according. To maintain the £49.20 cost per share.