I wonder if anyone could answer this question.
My wife is about to sell her pre marital home and is set to make a capital loss of about 60K.
Now, I have some equities which are sitting on a capital gain of about a similar amount.
Is it possible to offset the loss against the gain for CGT purposes?
We are jointly assessed for tax purposes....
Thanks!
Hi,
This is not something I've encountered before, so I'll defer to anyone with more experience of it, but a quick search throws up the following (from http://www.revenue.ie/en/about/foi/s16/templates/income-tax-capital-gains-tax-corporation-tax/part-44/)
"Capital gains tax on the chargeable gains of a married woman living with her husband is to be assessed and charged on the husband. The total tax charged is not to be different from what it would be if each spouse were to be assessed separately. The expression "living with" is to be interpreted in accordance with Section 1015(2) i.e. a husband and wife will be treated as living with each other unless they are separated by a court Order or Deed of Separation or are in fact separated in such circumstances that the separation is likely to be permanent."
My reading of that would be that unfortunately you can't offset your gain against her loss.
One possibility that occurs to me though, may be for you to transfer your equities to her - I'm not sure exactly how that can be done with quoted shares? But transfers between spouses don't give rise to a CGT disposal, so you won't be liable to a CGT charge. She could then dispose of the shares, realise a gain and utilise her loss from the house sale against this gain.
Considering there is a substantial potential CGT liability / saving here, I think it's definitely worth your while forking out a couple of hundred quid to get professional advice as to the most tax efficient way to proceed...
That revenue extract refers to the tax charge, the utilisation of losses is a separate matter. My understanding is that capital losses can be transferred between spouses provided there is no separate provisions prevent them from doing so e.g. B&B rules or connected party transactions.
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