Selling Shares With No Value Held In Paper Form

lukeskywalker

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I hold paper share certs from years ago in an Irish based oil exploration company that are now effectively worthless. The shares cost me thousands and now are worth less than ten euro! I have rung the UK based share registrars, and they say the Irish company only issues paper share certs (which I have) & shares are not held electronically. They will not sell them due to Brexit. I want to sell these shares to offset them against a capital gain elsewhere. Any idea how I can actually sell the shares, and how much it will cost....
 
Ok got onto Revenue, Basically they don't accept that its a complete loss despite 100:1 dilution and €4 value. Is there an Irish stockbroker that will let me sell these AIM paper cert form shares so that I can register capital loss?
 
What you can possibly do if you have say a deigro or similar online account, buy same amount of shares that you hold, wait 28 days so not seen to be share trading, sell them or the amount your previously held, as sales of similar shares are on a fifo vases, meaning yhe original cost is what's used when comparing to sales proceeds, and the residual you have is valued at recent purchase price.

There will be small fees involved on the buy/sell, but a lot less than trying to open a share trading account with a broker, transfer physical shares to digital and then sell them.

The certs you have left should relate to your later purchase and you can then gift them to a charity, but that doesn't generate any gain or loss.

That's my understanding of how to over come shares with nil value where you have physical certs and you want to sell them.
 
Ok got onto Revenue, Basically they don't accept that its a complete loss despite 100:1 dilution and €4 value. Is there an Irish stockbroker that will let me sell these AIM paper cert form shares so that I can register capital loss?
Did you ring some Revenue phoneline?

Those services are often manned by eejits who don’t know their backside from their elbow.

If the value has gone from thousands of Euro to less than €10 as you say, that’s 100% negligible value claim territory.

Just make the claim and get on with your life.
 
I might have this slightly wrong. This is how I remember it. My mother was trying to do the exact same with old banking shares. Maybe ptsb. I think she phyically signed the paper shares over to a new owner (her grandson). He is now the proud owner of 4 shares worth less than €10. She did this to avoid the selling fee, as the selling fee would've cost more than the shares current worth - and she wanted to realise the loss to offset against something else. Not sure if this is possible in your case.
 
Working out that out into a reasonable price for share is going to take some mathematic skills.

Every round of funding was underwritten simply diluted the floating shares, and there multiple funding options, the Chinese with a well known Australian financial company.


And on it went, just prove the amount you put in and subtract residual value even at .00001 or higher
 
What you can possibly do if you have say a deigro or similar online account, buy same amount of shares that you hold, wait 28 days so not seen to be share trading, sell them or the amount your previously held, as sales of similar shares are on a fifo vases, meaning yhe original cost is what's used when comparing to sales proceeds, and the residual you have is valued at recent purchase price.

There will be small fees involved on the buy/sell, but a lot less than trying to open a share trading account with a broker, transfer physical shares to digital and then sell them.

The certs you have left should relate to your later purchase and you can then gift them to a charity, but that doesn't generate any gain or loss.

That's my understanding of how to over come shares with nil value where you have physical certs and you want to sell them.
Nicely done.
 
Thank you everyone. It was a myaccount query to Revenue. Their argument is that they could go up again in value........ Cloughy, that is a very complex but very clever idea. So how it works is I buy X shares 15 years ago for €3000 now worth €10. I buy and sell X shares now more than 28 days apart for about €10. So under FIFO, Revenue consider this a purchase of €3000 and a sale of €10 with an allowable capital loss of €2990?
 
Thank you everyone. It was a myaccount query to Revenue. Their argument is that they could go up again in value........
IMHO it's unlikely that an Inspector would be that pernickety. If they quadruple in value you'll have the princely sum of €40. :cool:
 
Thank you everyone. It was a myaccount query to Revenue. Their argument is that they could go up again in value........ Cloughy, that is a very complex but very clever idea. So how it works is I buy X shares 15 years ago for €3000 now worth €10. I buy and sell X shares now more than 28 days apart for about €10. So under FIFO, Revenue consider this a purchase of €3000 and a sale of €10 with an allowable capital loss of €2990?
But sure that’s covered off with negligible value claims!

If the thing turns around, you pay tax on it.

The test is whether it has hit negligible value.

Whether it might or indeed does recover is a separate point.
 
I have a folder with many of the 1980 oil companies share certs, now worthless just sitting there.....not forgetting Waterford Glass, Cattles, Bradford & Bingley, Marconi....I treat it as my folder of failures. Over £50k in value........
 
If you mean that you effectively lost £50k then you could potentially write that off against future capital gains.
 
If you mean that you effectively lost £50k then you could potentially write that off against future capital gains.
I never actually sold the shares so in effect I have never actually made any loss. Must I actually sell them to offset my losses? Most of these companies such as Waterford Wedgewood and the others don't exist any more....so there is no market to sell them to?
 
I never actually sold the shares so in effect I have never actually made any loss. Must I actually sell them to offset my losses? Most of these companies such as Waterford Wedgewood and the others don't exist any more....so there is no market to sell them to?
Did you read the thread from the start?
 
That's it, the first shares you sell are deemed to be ghd ones you bought years ago, even though your holding is now are paper and digital shares,

If shares are still active like the bank ones then you can't claim negligible value, as a special act made the Anglo shares worthless so full cost of them can be claimed.

It's hard to get rid of paper shares you can't convert them easily to digital, few brokers left and to open account is costly.

Not sure about selling to someone privately, how fo you pay the stamp duty??
 
I have a folder with many of the 1980 oil companies share certs, now worthless just sitting there.....not forgetting Waterford Glass, Cattles, Bradford & Bingley, Marconi....I treat it as my folder of failures. Over £50k in value........
Maybe research when they stopped trading, Bradford and Bingley became a bank AFAIK, Waterford must have had a value on liquidation, the brand was bought, Marconi must have been gobbled up by someone, memory cable and wireless UK and At&T in the US.....

I would be a good exercise and there maybe funds belonging to you that is sat on some trustee account......?

Who knows.....you might be a millionaire or be €1000 better off little downside.
 
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