Carrying forward stock market loss

[PistonReg]

I sold some shares in the last tax year that I made a loss on which more than wiped out profit on others I sold. How do I carry this loss forward so that if I make a profit over the CGT allowance this year from shares, I can offset this loss against that?

Yes - I do have an accountant but I'd like to get an idea on this before I see him in a few weeks ;-)

Thanks!

[LC23]

You'll need details of all your gains and losses for the year. These will be reported on your tax return and any resulting loss will then be available to offset against future gains.

[Brown and Boris]

LC23 said:

You'll need details of all your gains and losses for the year. These will be reported on your tax return and any resulting loss will then be available to offset against future gains.

So you can't simply reduce your tacx bill this year then? Doesn't that mean that you may as well just wait until you sell, and then just claim whatever you have lost or declare what you have gained in that year, or is there a CG issue around telling them you made a loss in case on sale you are over the £9k (is it?) limit?

[PistonReg]

LC23 said:

You'll need details of all your gains and losses for the year. These will be reported on your tax return and any resulting loss will then be available to offset against future gains.

Excellent - this is what I'd hoped.

Thanks :-)

[Iain328]

Brown and Boris said:

LC23 said:

You'll need details of all your gains and losses for the year. These will be reported on your tax return and any resulting loss will then be available to offset against future gains.

So you can't simply reduce your tacx bill this year then? Doesn't that mean that you may as well just wait until you sell, and then just claim whatever you have lost or declare what you have gained in that year, or is there a CG issue around telling them you made a loss in case on sale you are over the £9k (is it?) limit?

Yes, losses in a given year always reduce your tax liability - the scam with losses though is that you have to use the losses up before you can use your allowance in the year in which the losses are incurred

So if you make £9K's worth of gains and £9K's worth of losses in the same year (and say the allowance is also £9K), in that year the losses wipe out the gains, your allowance goes unused and you carry no losses forward.

You have to do it this way in the year the losses are incurred - you can't use the allowance first.

However, if you brought £9K's worth of losses forward from a previous year and made £9K of gains with a £9K allowance, you can use the allowance to wipe out the gain & carry the loss forward for another year. So in this case you do get to use the allowance first.

Edited by Iain328 on Thursday 9th April 16:24