CGT Loss, Self Assessment and Jointly Owned Property

[Mollymoo60]

I sold my property with a loss of £9000, after costs of buying and selling have been taken into account. I have just started to complete my self assessment form for 15/16 and have a few queries.

The property is jointly owned. When completing the CGT worksheet, do I halve all the figures and then my husband also provides the same information on his return, the same as we do currently for declaring the rental income?

Be declaring a loss on the worksheet, is this enough for it to be registered with HRMC so it can be offset against a gain in a later year?

I have never lived in the property. It is asking if I would make "an election". I take it that there is no relief I need to claim? The property was bought purely as a BTL property a few years ago.

Can I claim the fee I paid to the mortgage company to redeem the mortgage as a selling cost?

I still own another property which there will be a CGT gain in the future. How long can I carry the loss forward to be offset against the eventual gain?

Between my last tenant leaving and the property selling, i incurred a few hundred pounds of costs on Council Tax, gas, electric, small repair jobs and mileage. Can any of these be claimed either on the CGT worksheet or as an expense on the SA property form?

Thanks in Anticipation.

[Gordon999]

Yes, you enter half the capital gain on your return and your husband enter half gain on his return.

Are you submitting a SA108 Capital Gains Summary Form ? There should be a box to enter your capital loss which is should be half the loss figure on the worksheet. There is no time limit on carrying losses forward but you should make and keep a copy of the information you submit in your returns in case the tax records are "lost" through computer breakdown.

The penalty fee paid to mortgage lender for early terminating fixed period deal and miscellaneous expenses incurred before exchange of sale contract are not capital gains expenses and should be charged against rental income from other BTL.

[Mollymoo60]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I am completing the CGT section within the SA form and have entered the information on the CGT worksheet.

The mortgage fee is just a normal redemption fee for ending the mortgage, it is not on a fixed period deal. As the Council Tax, electricity ad gas were incurred after the property was no longer available for rent, I presumed these could not be included as an expense on my property section of the SA form.

[jpkeates]

The mortgage fee is a business expense, incurred solely and exclusively for the business.
If the other costs pass that test, i.e. they were incurred in the few weeks after the tenant had left while you sold the property, they're allowable.

No one expects you to sell the property the day after the last tenant leaves in the state it was left in, you needed to carry out some maintenance, viewings etc and some of those costs are an unavoidable consequence of that.
If it's months and months while you decided what to do or lived there, that would be different.