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Q&A: What did I pay for my shares?
DR, Cheshire: I have built up a portfolio of shares over the years without personally initiating any sales. I now need to calculate my capital gains tax liability and am struggling because I do not know when I bought the shares Do you know where I could get hold of such information? One possibility is to ask the companies concerned if they have the information on record, but is there a simpler approach? Philip Pearson, P&P Invest , Southampton: Firstly, you need to know the share price. The starting point in establishing the purchase cost of any share is the date when the share was first acquired. To assist with this, a contract note is normally created which will confirm the date and time of the transaction, the amount of stock bought or sold and the price. This is the basis by which any capital gain or loss can be calculated. Windfall shares or issues of stock through denationalisation are seen by HM Revenue & Customs as being received at nil cost and therefore the total price of the share can be deemed to be a gain. Unfortunately, tracking a share price can be extremely complicated as companies very often undertake restructuring and consolidation over the years. This can lead to new shares being issued and stock being revalued significantly over time. If you don't have the contract note then you could contact the stock exchange and ask for the closing price of any stock when it was initially issued to the market. This will give an indication of the purchase cost, but it's not an accurate record as the price of stock can fluctuate significantly throughout a day's trading. If the shares were purchased through a broker then I am sure the firm will have detailed records of transactions going back into the past. To the best of my knowledge, however, there are no websites that provide detailed information on historic share prices, although you could contact the registrars of the share. But if they in turn have changed over the years, their records are unlikely to have a complete history of the share price in the past. Any gain you have made upon the eventual sale of the stock can firstly be offset against any losses you may have experienced in the past and then further benefit from indexation relief against the cost of inflation up until 17 March 1998. After that, the shares can benefit from what's called taper relief. This true profit is then used as the basis for any CGT calculation. The first £9,200 of gain is tax-free and any balance is then treated as income and taxed according to your situation.
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