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Accounts

Accounts represent the different real world accounts that you have and impact the tax calculations in the ways described below. Beyond that, the main practical purpose of the accounts is that the balance calculation tool creates separate balances for each account, which allows you to compare the actual balances of those accounts to the balances in the system.

Broker

A broker represents a real world broker or financial institution that you have an account with. Its currency CGT treatment and tax country are inherited by all accounts on the broker. Its time zone is also used to interpret imported timestamps that do not contain an explicit UTC offset.

Supported broker imports can create a broker and its accounts automatically. If a statement identifies an account, ShareCalc uses that identifier to route later imports where the match is unambiguous. Review the proposed destination and time zone when the import wizard asks you to assign transactions.

Currency CGT Treatment

The currency CGT treatment controls whether non-sterling currencies held at the broker are chargeable to capital gains tax. Currency held in the form of a simple debt (e.g. in a bank account) is not chargeable to tax (see CG78320 for more information). Sterling is never chargeable. The effect of each setting is as follows:

  • Exempt (simple debt): Non-sterling currencies are not chargeable in any account on the broker and buying or selling the currency will not lead to a disposal or acquisition. No implicit disposals or acquisitions will be created for non-sterling currencies.
  • Chargeable: Non-sterling currencies are chargeable to tax in any account on the broker and disposals and acquisitions will be created when they are disposed of or acquired. This includes implicit disposals (such as paying a fee in a non-sterling currency) or acquisitions (such as receiving a dividend in a non-sterling currency).

Brokers created by an import are set to Exempt. Edit the broker to change it. The setting applies to the whole history of the broker.

How your currency is held in a given account is a complex question. It may be useful to generate a tax report for each treatment and compare the result.

Two system limitations of the setting are:

  • Exercising or assigning an option on a currency with an underlying quantity requires the treatment to be Chargeable.
  • Futures settled in a non-sterling currency are not supported when the treatment is Chargeable and are excluded from the calculation.

Tax Country

The tax country of the broker is used to set the tax country of broker interest where it is not set on the individual transaction.

Account

Each account represents an individual account at a broker and inherits the currency CGT treatment and tax country of the broker.