When to crystalise gains on shares, to use up capital losses on shares?

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Protocol

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I bought all 4x banks shares years ago, and made losses on all four.

I bought Ryanair at 2.67 over 15 years ago, and at 10 / 10.50 in 2019.

I sold Ryanair in 2021, made a capital gain, sold PTSB also, put the capital gain against losses on Anglo and PTSB.

I bought back into Ryanair at 15.33 a few weeks later.

Ryanair is at 20 now, and I have unrealised losses from AIB.

Should I repeat the process again, so as to use the paper losses on AIB, and then establish a new higher base price for Ryanair?

Or simply stay as I am, and carry the loss forward?
 
So you would sell Ryanair and AIB.

Then buy back Ryanair.

What does that achieve except for higher profits for the stockbrokers?

Unless you fear a change in legislation, your AIB losses should be safe.
 
The fees are small: 3 to sell, and 3 to buy, so 9 in total.

Then there is 1% stamp duty, say 100 euro, that is a killer.
 
You should crystallise enough gains each year to reach €1270 since it's shielded from CGT.

Were you planning to sell AIB anyway? Then doing it and rebasing your Ryanair price is sensible. But doing it just because you have losses isn't.
 
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Can't capital losses be carried forward indefinitely? Thus the answer would be only sell when you need to / met profit target.

I assumed this question was going to be about whether it is better to sell and recognise profits to use up the annual exemption.
 
so if you have 000's of losses from say Anglo shares that were made worthless then once you have gains that exceed that then you get the annual allowance. AIB losses have to be realised, they were not deemed worthless so you have to physically sell the shares.
 
Anglo losses used already against first Ryanair sale.
PTSB sold, losses realised, used against first Ryanair sale.

The gains were a few hundred more than these two losses, so the net gain that year was maybe 250, so no CGT was due.

AIB losses remain unrealised.
 
Protocol said:
The fees are small: 3 to sell, and 3 to buy, so 9 in total.
Click to expand...

I think that people are being misled by these "small" fees. How do you think that the broker makes its money?

There is also a spread between the buying price and the selling price which you don't see.
 
Cloughy makes a good point which needs to stressed.

If you have realised losses e.g. you have sold shares at a loss, these losses must be used before the annual exemption is used.

If you have unrealised losses, e.g. you still have AIB shares which are worth a lot less than you paid for them, they don't affect your annual exemption.

The annual exemption is €1,270
The tax saved by using it is 33% or €419.
Set against this would be the costs of selling and buying again.

If that is material, by all means use it but for a lot of investors (€419 less costs) would not be material.

Brendan
 
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