Stamp Duty On Uk Share Dealing

[champken]

I do a bit of share dealing when i feel there is an opportunity to make a little money...my way of doing it is selling shares that i already own at a price i am happy and profitable with and then if the price drops re-purchasing if there is a profit in it, sometimes this can happen within a day, ..a few years ago i used to deal with a broker and if you traded the same way within the T3, 5 or 10 then you wouldn't have to again pay the stamp duty..now i am using HSBC who charge a reasonable £12.95 per trade, however despite trying to clarify with them the rules/laws regarding stamp duty i am getting nowhere, can somebody clarify this?

[neil324]

Stamp duty, do mean UK income tax or CGT?

If so unless it's spread betting and done through a spread betting broker or inside an ISA then it's subject to both. Even then spread betting is subject to CGT tax above 10K profit i think, but i believe there are ways around this.

[Darrel]

You didnt pay stamp duty (it's a small purchase tax on shares, for anyone unfamiliar with UK finance) on your manual T3, T5 and T10 trades because technically they never took place. You never actually sold them and so didnt actually buy them back. You just earned (or lost) the difference between the two prices. The sale or purchase only actually happens at the end of the T period and in your case the two just cancelled each other out.

These days of course wth the cheap online brokers it is all done electronically and settlement is assumed to be a fact. So you pay the duty.

If you want to avoid the duty (and indeed the broker fee) then you can trade options or "spread bet" instead. And in fact for what you do that might make more sense, though you need to remember that you can (potentially) lose far more than the value of your investment if you get it wrong, due to leverage. Personally I would rather sleep at night.

[peterpop]

You didnt pay stamp duty (it's a small purchase tax on shares, for anyone unfamiliar with UK finance) on your manual T3, T5 and T10 trades because technically they never took place. You never actually sold them and so didnt actually buy them back. You just earned (or lost) the difference between the two prices. The sale or purchase only actually happens at the end of the T period and in your case the two just cancelled each other out.

These days of course wth the cheap online brokers it is all done electronically and settlement is assumed to be a fact. So you pay the duty.

If you want to avoid the duty (and indeed the broker fee) then you can trade options or "spread bet" instead. And in fact for what you do that might make more sense, though you need to remember that you can (potentially) lose far more than the value of your investment if you get it wrong, due to leverage. Personally I would rather sleep at night.

I agree. I keep my dealing costs down by using Alliance Trust Savings in UK. They have a dealing cost as low as 6.50 per deal BUT you have to own a lot of their shares to get that low. I normally pay 9.28 pds per deal.

On another subject I have opened a dealing account in Thailand with Tisco and am about to start trading. I am new to the SET and would be grateful for any starting advice.