Sell and buy shares back simultaneously

[Ursus]

Hello, Can anyone clarify that if you sell a large tranch of shares at a loss and in the same phone call buy them back again - ie within minutes - the losses generated can ONLY be offset for Capital Gains Tax against potential future gains of those repurchased shares and NO OTHER shares?

It's not illegal to do this I presume? I mean in the sense of breaking tax/Revenue rules or guidelines?

Many thanks in advance.

PS What a great site this is. I've only discovered it!

 

[evoke]

you can offset the loss against any shares you lose money on to my knowledge. does not have to be the shares you lost money on. most people that make a loss on a share would never buy them back so would not make sense.

any loss can be transferred to CGT of a share you made money on. Not sure how many years though you can keep that.

e.g. say in 2000 i made a loss of €5000 on shares. Can that be loss be offset against CGT in 2010?

 

[Sunny]

you can offset the loss against any shares you lose money on to my knowledge. does not have to be the shares you lost money on. most people that make a loss on a share would never buy them back so would not make sense.

any loss can be transferred to CGT of a share you made money on. Not sure how many years though you can keep that.

e.g. say in 2000 i made a loss of €5000 on shares. Can that be loss be offset against CGT in 2010?

Don't think that is true. I don't think you are entitled to use the loss to offset against capital gains for anything other than those shares because he sold and bought back the shares straight away. I think there is a minimum 4 week (???) period between transactions. Otherwise people would sell and get the capital loss but buy them back straight away so there would be no or very little actual capital loss but they would still be able to write it off against capital gains elsewhere.