Contents
Into The Unknown
Season Of Goodwill
Farewell Andre
Toon Done Doon
Day Of Reckoning
Artistic Licence
Gizmos Again
A Free Lunch
Sweet As Nectar
Security Concerns
Going For A Spin
The Cap Does Not Fit
While It's Hot?
Code Cracking
Bad Connection
Broken Trusts
You Can't Take It With You
Dividend Returns
IR35 RIP?
Spam Spam Spam
Breaking Up
Duty Calls
Time Shift
Moving Vans
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You are thinking of selling something and making a capital gain. The date on which you do this can be important for several reasons. It might put the sale in a different tax year, which gives you another annual exemption and delays the payment of the tax. It might get you more taper relief, which goes up for complete years you have owned the asset. If you are becoming a tax exile, you would want the sale to take place after you had gone abroad. The tax considerations are probably secondary to the commercial ones in most cases. You want to sell, the purchaser wants to buy. You want to sign a contract and be sure the deal is going to happen. They might not have the money ready to pay you until a particular day. It's very common with property deals to sign the papers on one day and hand over possession and consideration on another. So when does the sale happen for CGT? The law is clear: the day you hand over the property and the money is irrelevant: the sale happens for CGT when an unconditional contract is signed. That means that a contract on 1 April 2007 falls in the tax year 2006/07, even if the property passes on 30 April. People sometimes try to build in artificial "conditions" into a contract to delay a disposal into the future. This usually doesn't work. For example, "I agree to sell if you paint the thing blue" is not an unconditional contract in the tax law sense, because the condition is under the control of the two parties. There is a contract for sale on the day it is signed. "I agree to sell if the local authority grants planning permission" is different - the contract will be final, and will trigger a CGT disposal, on the day that permission is granted. If you are thinking of selling something and making a gain, it's worth thinking about timing. We will be happy to advise you.  |