Badges of trade for CG stock gains

stainluss

I have a day job but adjust my six-figure portfolio multiple times per year, resulting in large aggregate considerations but not large chargeable gains and losses. I do not trade on a daily or even weekly basis consistently. I am filling my CGT return but am worried that there is a risk of me being lumped as a trader. Where is the line? Is there any way of knowing how revenue will decide?

Marcusm

not a chance that this would be successfully asserted and, indeed, Reveneu has historically been very reluctant to accept trading status for day traders (which you aren’t even getting to that level). The leading case, albeit historical at a time when dealing in shares was more complex, involved 120 or more transactions per year (Salt v Chamberlain). There is much more to be lost for the exchequer through allowing loss relief than to be gained by asserting trading status for investors such as yourself.

Peregrinus

Yeah, the fight is nearly always the other way — a taxpayer who has been burned by adverse market movements aruging that he is trading and seeking to claim a deduction for his trading losses against his earned income, with the Revunue opposing him.