The Lemon Fool

Hi. Just looking for some advice/info.

We’ve just sold our property and trying to work out the CGT due. I’ve got a spreadsheet from my accountant and I’m OK with most of it apart from 1 thing that I don’t understand – I’m NOT looking for anyone to check the numbers or anything, I just want to improve my understanding without the ‘jargon’. So, for simplicity I will put an example (with made up data) in here and highlight my question.

Property bought 2002 (100% ownership by me (unmarried) for £150,000
Married - Ownership changed in 2012 (10 years) to 50/50 with my new wife (Valued at £200,000)
Sold in 2022 (20 years) for £300,000

Now it seems that the “Gain before Relief” in the spreadhseet I have is 50/50 of the WHOLE gain so £75,000 for me and £75,000 for my wife but this seems odd since my wife didn’t have any ownership of the property until 2012 so surely her ‘gain’ should be calculated for the Sale value minus the value in 2012 so (£300,000 - £200,000) / 2?

I know it’s a LOT more complicated than that – with allowable costs, Private Residency and Letting Relief etc but can anyone give me a relatively easy answer to the above?

Many thanks in advance.

Jarwyn wrote:Hi. Just looking for some advice/info.

We’ve just sold our property and trying to work out the CGT due. I’ve got a spreadsheet from my accountant and I’m OK with most of it apart from 1 thing that I don’t understand – I’m NOT looking for anyone to check the numbers or anything, I just want to improve my understanding without the ‘jargon’. So, for simplicity I will put an example (with made up data) in here and highlight my question.

Property bought 2002 (100% ownership by me (unmarried) for £150,000
Married - Ownership changed in 2012 (10 years) to 50/50 with my new wife (Valued at £200,000)
Sold in 2022 (20 years) for £300,000

Now it seems that the “Gain before Relief” in the spreadhseet I have is 50/50 of the WHOLE gain so £75,000 for me and £75,000 for my wife but this seems odd since my wife didn’t have any ownership of the property until 2012 so surely her ‘gain’ should be calculated for the Sale value minus the value in 2012 so (£300,000 - £200,000) / 2?

I know it’s a LOT more complicated than that – with allowable costs, Private Residency and Letting Relief etc but can anyone give me a relatively easy answer to the above?

Many thanks in advance.

Yes the easy answer is that when you give an asset to your spouse the spouse is deemed to have acquired the asset at your original cost and no CGT is chargeable at the time of the gift. The gain is 'held over'. So it is correct that the gain is equally shared between you even though she did not own the house for the whole period.

Ah right - got it. Thanks very much for the quick reply.