Gengulphus wrote: Yes, a reasonable approach, as long as one is willing to accept a few drawbacks, such as that its choice of which investments to put in tax-sheltered accounts might not be optimal (e.g. ISAs generally don't shelter one from withholding taxes on foreign security dividends when they would on UK security dividends, thus wasting part of the benefit of the tax shelter) and that it has a "tax tail wagging the investment dog" aspect, especially if the fraction of one's wealth that one has been able to get into tax-sheltered accounts is fairly small. In my case, confining ordinary shares to tax-sheltered accounts would have a big "tax tail wagging the investment dog" aspect, due to my use of a HYP strategy. (And just in case anyone feels I need to be told that there are other types of strategy that I could use, I don't - I already know it! And I'm aware of some of those other types of strategy, and will ask on a more appropriate board than this one if and when I want to know more about them.)
But in my case, there's quite a big drawback, namely the sheer size of the unrealised capital gains currently on the holdings in my taxable accounts. Any way of moving capital from them into other types of holding will realise massive capital gains, so simplifying my CGT position along the lines you suggest would involve either paying a lot of CGT in the near future if I want to get there at all quickly, or taking many years about it (and still paying quite a lot of CGT per year), or making a lot of use of various CGT mitigation measures (all of which have limits on their use, drawbacks of their own and/or conditions I would find unacceptable).
Yes, I know such large unrealised capital gains are a nice problem to have! And I'm not complaining about it - just explaining why the approach you describe towards simplifying CGT record-keeping and computations would present me with some decidedly difficult decisions to make. I do agree with your general suggestion of simplifying the investments held and how they're held, and indeed have been doing some simplifying over the last year or two and intend to do more - but I don't expect to be able to get anywhere near the level of simplicity you describe before the end of my life without some pretty seriously painful contact with the CGT nettle...
Very much agreed, Gengulphus.
This long reply and thread, confirms my use of Investor 3 software as sensible. I simply enter all my prices, transactions and dividends each month for four portfolios: ITs LTH, ISAs for my wife and me, AIM IHT portfolio. It takes 1-2 hours depending on how many dividends re-invested and trades made. But at any time I can calculate my CGT position for current and possibly future sales just by a couple of mouse clicks. At tax time I just print off the CGT report for each sale not in an ISA. I should certainly not be happy relying on a broker to keep all my records, some purchase going back over 30 years.