My husband had shares in the company he worked for which paid a nice dividend every year. As I did not use all of my allowable earnings at 20 per cent, he transferred all of the shares into my name.

If he predeceases me what capital gains tax will I be liable for on any of the shares when I sell? Will it be based on the varying prices he paid for the shares or the value of all shares on the day they passed to me or the value at his date of death?

If I predecease him and they pass back to him through my will, what will the base price be?

Finally is there any change to these conditions if I transfer the shares back to his name while I am still alive?

LMcG

Your question draws attention to an interesting feature of the workings of Ireland’s capital gains tax regime.

In general, capital gains tax arises on the transfer of an asset, such as shares, to another person. However, as happens in several areas of the tax code, specific and potentially advantageous provision is made for transfers between spouses.

Section 1028 of the Taxes Consolidation Act provides that no capital gains tax arises on assets that are given by one spouse to another.

This, as you have discovered, can help families with their tax planning to maximise the benefit from reliefs – or indeed to offset losses on other assets.

There are limited scenarios in which this tax free transfer does not kick in. That includes trading stock – raw materials and goods – in a business carried on by one spouse which is transferred to a spouse; the transfer of an asset to a non-resident spouse not subject to capital gains tax where they are tax resident and the transfer of an asset to a former spouse unless it is covered by a court order.

None of these apply here but might be relevant to other readers.

So when your husband gave these shares from his employer to you, it was a transfer entirely free of tax implications. However, what that does do is fix the “acquisition date” for you not to when you actually received the shares but when he got them in the first place.

So if he were to predecease you and you decided to sell the shares, you would need to calculate the gain from the time he originally received the shares to when you sell them, not from when they were transferred into your name.

And as your husband received these shares at different times over a number of years, you will have to know how many shares he got on what dates and calculate the gains on each tranche separately.

In doing that, you need to be aware of the first in/first out rule under capital gains. This means that if you sell any of these shares, Revenue will always assume that the first shares to be sold were the ones you have had the longest – the first ones your husband got.

You cannot choose to sell the ones he got most recently on the basis that the gain on those is the lowest and will lead to a smaller tax bill.

Can you transfer the shares back to your husband? You can, and again, as a spousal transfer, there will be no capital gains tax charge on that transfer.

In that scenario, any future sale of the shares by your husband would have the capital gains tax liability measured against when he originally acquired them, not when he received them from you.

If you die before him, again there is no capital gains tax liability as any capital gain is deemed under Irish tax law to die with the owner of the asset.

In this case, the acquisition value of the shares for any beneficiary under a will is the price they were trading at on the day that you die.

So, if you sell these shares, you will be liable to capital gains going back to when your husband originally received them and if you transfer them back to him, the same applies for him unless that is under the terms of a will.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to [email protected] with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice.