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Assets

Assets represent the different assets that you hold across your accounts, including currencies. Each asset has fields that may be needed to calculate tax correctly.

Imports create or enrich assets from identifiers and descriptions in broker statements. After importing, review new and unclassified assets before relying on a tax calculation. In particular, check the asset type, tax country, distribution type, reporting status, and any option or future fields.

Fields

  • Type: the type of asset, described below. It is important to accurately classify your assets as the type can impact the tax treatment.
  • Name: the name of the asset used through the system for information purposes.
  • Identifiers: the symbols and codes (ISIN, CUSIP, SEDOL) the asset is known by, used for matching during imports and for looking up reference data. See Identifiers below. It is recommended to fill in the ISIN where available.
  • Tax Country: the domicile of the asset. Defines the withholding tax country for transactions that use the Default from asset tax country. See Country Codes.
  • Default distribution type: The classification to use for distributions attributed to the asset when transactions are imported. It has no impact on transactions already in the system. Only funds have it: a bond fund's distributions are interest, an equity fund's are dividends. It does not apply to other asset types, whose distributions are unambiguous or which do not have distributions, such as stocks, currencies, UK gilts, and UK REITs.
  • HMRC Reporting Status: Whether an offshore fund is a reporting fund. Only applies to the Offshore Fund type, described below.

Identifiers

Each identifier has a kind (ISIN, CUSIP, SEDOL or Symbol), a value, and a standing: current or former.

  • Current identifiers are what the asset is called now. They are used to label the asset throughout the system.
  • Former identifiers are what the asset used to be called, for example a ticker before a rename or an ISIN before a corporate action. They still match imports, so older statements continue to map to the same asset, and reference data still reads former ISINs.

Use Mark former and Mark current to move an identifier between the two groups. When a ticker or ISIN changes, mark the old value as former and add the new value, rather than overwriting it. Overwriting the old value means statements that still use it will no longer match the asset. New identifiers are current.

Imports only add identifiers: they never remove one or mark it former. An old statement can add an identifier the asset does not have yet, but if the statement is recognisably from before a change (it carries a former ISIN, say), its new values are recorded as former.

While you edit, ShareCalc warns about identifiers that look wrong. The same warnings appear in Tax Issues:

  • a value that is not valid for its kind, such as an ISIN with the wrong check digit, which may prevent matching reference data
  • a kind the asset type does not use, such as an ISIN on a currency
  • more than one current ISIN or CUSIP, as an asset can only have one of each
  • more than one symbol on a currency, as a currency is identified by its code alone

These are warnings, not errors, and they do not stop you saving or calculating tax. Fix them by correcting the value or marking the extra identifier as former.

Merging assets

When you merge an asset into another, the asset you merge into keeps all of its identifiers and the identifiers of the merged asset are added to it, so every value continues to match imports. If both assets have a current ISIN (or CUSIP), the one from the merged asset becomes former. Check the identifiers after merging and use Mark current if the wrong one is current.

Asset Types

Currency

The cash currency of a country.

Stock

This type represents ordinary shares and is treated for capital gains tax as described in the Capital Gains Manual.

Offshore Fund

This type represents offshore funds as explained in the HMRC Helpsheet. Each offshore fund has an HMRC Reporting Status field, which determines its tax treatment:

  • Reporting: the fund is listed in the HMRC list of reporting funds. Reporting funds are treated the same as ordinary shares for capital gains tax purposes, but they support excess reportable income (ERI), accumulation (notional interest and dividends), and equalisation.
  • Non-Reporting: the fund is not a reporting fund. A disposal at a gain is treated as an offshore income gain, which is taxed as income. A disposal at a loss is treated as a capital loss.

New offshore funds default to Non-Reporting. ShareCalc includes HMRC's list and can use it to identify the exact share class and reporting status when a valid ISIN is available. A fund not being matched does not mean that it is Non-Reporting. See Reference Data for matching behaviour, date ranges, conflicts, and coverage limitations.

It is important to note that the system is limited to supporting offshore funds that had the same reporting status for the entire period of your ownership. You should not classify a fund that changed status, while you owned it, as a reporting fund.

UK Fund

This type represents UK funds that are treated like ordinary shares for capital gains tax purposes, but allows support for accumulation (notional interest and dividends) and equalisation.

UK Gilt

The type represents UK gilts as described in CG54900. Disposal are not subject to capital gains tax. It has one extra field:

  • Expiry date: The maturity date of the gilt.

UK REIT

This type represents shares in a UK Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), as described in the SAIM5300. They are treated like ordinary shares for capital gains tax purposes, but they can pay two kinds of distribution: ordinary dividends (treated like any other UK company dividend) and Property Income Distributions (PIDs), which are taxed as UK property income rather than as dividends and are reported separately. See the Property Income Distribution transaction type for more detail.

UK REITs are, by definition, UK assets, so the tax country is always the UK and a default distribution type does not apply.

Also see scope and limitations, if you held a UK REIT before April 6, 2019 and had any non-residency periods.

Option

The option type represents an option that is subject to the tax treatment summarised in CG55536. It has three fields specific to it:

  • Option type: Put or a Call
  • Underlying Asset: The underlying asset of the option, required if exercised or assigned, but can be left blank otherwise. Where the underlying asset is a currency, the broker's currency CGT treatment must be Chargeable, as otherwise the underlying trades will not be generated.
  • Expiry date: The expiry date of the option, used to check integrity of option transactions in the system.

Future

The future type represents a future that is subject to the tax treatment summarised in CG56000P and TCGA92/S143. Support for futures is limited to futures that are opened and closed by trades only. Cash or underlying settlement is currently unsupported.

Futures are opened and closed using the standard trade types, but unlike all other trades, the consideration represents the contract value, which will then be used to calculate the payment made or received.

It has a additional fields similar to that of an option:

  • Underlying Asset: The underlying asset of the future. It can be left empty unless required by a transaction.
  • Expiry date: The expiry date of the future, used to check integrity of transactions in the system.

Unknown

Unknown assets are for assets not yet supported by the system. Any transaction with an unknown asset in any field will be ignored for the purposes of tax calculations, as if it was not in the system.