TAX TIP OF THE WEEK - Looking to sell your 2nd property but worried about capital gains tax?

In recent years house prices have gone through the roof and if you have owned the property for a decent amount of time then you will likely be facing a hefty CGT bill on sale.

However with a bit of planning your liability could be reduced somewhat, here are a few options:
If you are married and the property is in your name only, then you can transfer part of the property to your spouse. This doesn’t trigger any CGT and can be done just before the sale. By doing this you can use your spouse’s personal allowance to reduce the eventual bill.

If you don’t mind your children benefitting then you could also transfer the proportion of the property to your children. As this transfer is subject to capital gains you will need to plan this so your allowance can be used up in the years leading up to the sale. You can also double the effect of this by also having your wife gift a share to children thus using up her allowance.

If the above still leaves you with a capital gain then you could use the proceeds to invest into a EIS Investment, this will allow you to defer the gain until later years and with careful planning could even eliminate the gain through your yearly personal allowance.

Hope this was helpful, for lots more tax tips and strategies get a copy of our 71 ways to save tax checklist https://bit.ly/2YQbhvr