HMRC Update: Excluded Indexed Securities

Following discussions with the investment and wealth management industry, taxpayers and their agents, HMRC have acknowledged, in Agent Update 112, the difficulties for individuals to assess and report details of Excluded Indexed Securities on the Self Assessment tax return. 

Taxpayers have been advised to “take reasonable care to make arrangements to have this information available for their 2022 to 2023 returns”.  HMRC expects that individuals “take all reasonable steps to ensure that the tax return is correct and complete to the best of their knowledge” but, where taxpayers cannot obtain all information for their return, “they should complete the tax return on the basis that appears most appropriate and should include full details of the points on which they are uncertain in the return.”

If you have had difficulty obtaining and providing details of Excluded Indexed Securities to your clients for 2022-23, you may wish to inform them of this notice from HMRC.

This is not a substitute for making all reasonable efforts to classify securities correctly, but the fact that HMRC have acknowledged the difficulties and set out their position in this way suggests that they will not take an aggressive approach to taxpayers who make an honest and reasonable effort to complete their tax return correctly.

The latest version of CGiX allows you to classify assets as Excluded Indexed Securities, and reports gains on those assets separately in order to help individuals complete the tax return correctly.  Please speak to your contact at FSL, or get in touch via our website, to ensure you have the latest asset classification and reporting functionality in your software.