The transcript of our recent webinar on “Current Share Valuation Issues and Questions to HMRC” is now available to download.

Click here to download a pdf transcript of the discussion with Barry Roland, assistant director at HMRC valuation team, which answers the following key questions:

• Looking at an administrative and structural question, how is the Share Valuation department at HMRC structured?
• How many cases do you believe that SAV with deal with each year, and how do they breakdown between share schemes, ITEPA, IHT, CGT, etc?
• Bearing in mind the dynamics of the way that the cases are coming in, what operational changes have share valuation made in the last couple of years, and what others are planned?
• Growth shares, very often with quite complicated articles, have become a lot more popular in recent years and I believe they’ve required SAV to allocate quite substantial internal resources to deal with them. My question is, how do you believe practitioners could present valuations for growth shares in a better way maybe and in a form which might make it easier for HMRC to consider them and hopefully agree them?
• Could you describe HMRC’s policy regarding the agreement of EMI valuations after the awards have been granted, and the time limits that you expect advisors to work to?
• Could you explain the principles for valuing shares in an unquoted company, or rather how they might differ, or to what extent they might differ, when you’re valuing shares on the one hand for ITEPA or CGT purposes, and on the other hand for inheritance tax purposes.
• I think one of the subjects that often engages valuers with HMRC concerns what is sometimes called the information standard, what information you can properly take into account in a fiscal valuation. Could you describe HMRC’s views regarding this?
• Does HMRC ever encounter situations where, say, there were transfers of shares and/or option awards which were made at or about the same time, but for different tax purposes. For example, EMI option grants, corporation tax deductions, CGT calculations, or even IhT valuations or stamp duty where as a result market values are needed for different purposes. If so, does HMRC believe it’s possible to have different taxable market values agreed for essentially the same shares at essentially the same time?
• Given the statutory basis of valuation is the same for ITEPA and CGT purposes, is it conceivable that a valuation accepted for, say, an ITEPA purpose would not automatically be acceptable for CGT purposes as well, and vice versa?
• If a valuation has not already been agreed under the PTVC procedure, and the employee merely records the award of an employment security in his tax return, giving details of the awards and an unagreed value, how long does HMRC have to raise a question with the taxpayer on the value shown on that return before the valuation is effectively agreed through the self-assessment tax return process?
• Veering away from the actual area of unquoted company valuations to a slightly different topic, it’s actually the Office of Tax Simplification, the OTS, a while back, proposed that for quoted securities, the current quarter up basis in the legislation, as a simplifying measure, should be replaced with the closing price. I know there’s been consultations on this, and even draft regulations about this. What point have these proposals currently reached?