My friend agreed to sell a property he owned to his son who was renting the house in 2015. The sales price was agreed at 2015 level. He now wishes to draw up sales contract and complete the sale legally. The reason the sale was not completed at the time was that his son had to move abroad with his job and the sale was delayed. From a CGT & a CAT perspective can he use the 2015 selling price agreed or must the SP be at 2017 price level?
But Brendan we have seen that the current market value can be anything the valuer chooses to commit to paper as highlighted in the thread 'Selling farm following recent death resulting in CAT and CGT' and valuations can be influenced by the purpose of the valuation e.g. inheritance, sale, etc.
My reading of that thread is that getting the valuation you want, rather than an honest 'current market' value, would not take too much effort.
Materiality comes into play in these situations Brendan. If a property is valued somewhere within a reasonable ass's roar of a likely market value it's not likely to be worth Revenue committing the necessary resources to challenging it.
The specific form of words in Revenues CAT manual is that valuation is more art than science. There will always be a range of acceptable values within which the true market value resides. This introduces shades of grey, and there's cost and risk for both parties taking it all the way to Appeal Commissioner / Court. Hence they will start with most egregious outliers valuation-wise, and work from there. That's how I'd imagine it should be anyway, if they are using their own resources even remotely efficiently.
Not necessarily. See my previous post. If it's not an off the wall unreasonable valuation and doesn't give them a concern that there's a worthwhile amount of tax at risk, then they'll accept it.