Messy investments - can I pay someone to give them a spring clean?

[Alaric]

If I understand the rules correctly, you can sell £11,700 this tax year (and £12,000 next year, etc), without incurring any tax liability - and, more importantly perhaps, without having to submit anything to HMRC!

That's the amount of gain. If you stay under that limit, you can sell up to 4 times the amount without having to report it.

It presumes you have records of what was paid, or what it was worth when inherited.

[PinkDalek]

If I understand the rules correctly, you can sell £11,700 this tax year (and £12,000 next year, etc), without incurring any tax liability - and, more importantly perhaps, without having to submit anything to HMRC!

That's the amount of gain. If you stay under that limit, you can sell up to 4 times the amount without having to report it.

That depends on whether or not any capital losses are realised in the tax year concerned.

For 2017-18 (my bold):

Fill in the ‘Capital gains summary’ pages and attach your computations if:

• you sold or disposed of chargeable assets which were worth more than £45,200

• your chargeable gains before taking off any losses were more than £11,300 ...

From https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... s_2018.pdf

Anyway, 77ss is correct in that if disposal proceeds are £11,700 or less in 2018-19, there is nothing to report.

[TUK020]

I did wonder about potential capital gains. If I understand the rules correctly, you can sell £11,700 this tax year (and £12,000 next year, etc), without incurring any tax liability - and, more importantly perhaps, without having to submit anything to HMRC! Doing it that way would take 4 years, but would remove a significant element of complexity (at least I find it so).

Your annual exemption for capital gain is £11,700. If the sale value is below 4x this (not sure of the exact figure), you don't need to report it to HMRC.

[XFool]

Brokers may offer a facility ("bed & ISA") where they will sell in the taxed account and then repurchase in the ISA.

Yes, that is what I was trying to do I think - the Halifax ISA website had forms to fill in to transfer shares outside an ISA in but it turned out to be a Crest transfer form, which wasn't any good for paper certs.

A bit late now but a CREST Transfer form is exactly what you do need to transfer a certificated holding into a nominee share dealing account (SDA)! Usually there is no charge for doing this - as is the case with HSDL.

But, as others have explained, you normally can't use this to go directly into an ISA, it would have to go: Cert ---> SDA ---> ISA(By cash)

As you have held this portfolio for 20 years, it would be interesting to compare (if possible) it's return over that period to some appropriate index. You might then even want to keep it, or not.