Company Reorganisations within IRIS, using Capital Assets

When company reorganisations take place with say  Company X taking over Company Y. Mergers, Management Buy-Outs and Reverse take-overs are other events that fall into the reorganisation category.

The basic reorganisations such as Bonus Issues and Rights Issues can be handled by Capital Assets without any problem, it is where there is a complete exchange of shares and/or cash, that IRISPTP has the inability to cope with. There are certain workarounds that can be used to manipulate capital assets into handling these more complex reorganisations. These are outlined below.

The reorganisations we are going to discuss are typical of the majority of reorganisations that happen. It is where ‘Company Y’ takes over ‘Company X’ and issue ‘A’ amount of shares in the new company for ‘B’ amount of shares in the old company.

An extension to this reorganisation would be where ‘Company Y’ also gave a cash lump sum to the shareholder. In this scenario Company 'Y' offered the shareholders of Company 'X' shares plus a cash lump sum.

Example

John is a shareholder of Company 'X'.

Proportion_of_Shares_Received_-to-_Cash_Received.

The_Cash_Element

The Shares_Element

The Final Stage

 


 

Proportion of Shares Received -to- Cash Received

For each Company 'X'  share, john will receive 0.968 Company 'Y' shares plus £4 cash. Therefore for a shareholding of 7000 shares, John will receive:

Shares

6776 Company 'Y' shares valued at £8.75

£59290

= A

Cash

£4 for each Company 'X' share

£28000

= B

 

 

£87290

 

 

Back to top



The Cash Element

Capital gains tax will be payable in respect of the cash element part of the offer. Since John did not dispose of any of his Company 'X' shares, the cash element must be put through ‘Other Capital Gains’ in Capital Assets in order to declare the gain to the HM Revenue & Customs. The taxable gain is calculated as follows:

Amount of cash received

£28,000

Less Part of the base cost of his Company 'X' shares

(£9,192)

Gain chargeable to CGT

£18,808

 

Question: ‘How did we come to a figure for the allocation of base cost against the cash received by John?’

The base cost of the new shares and cash will be allocated according to their relative proportion.

Lets say:

A =

Value of Company 'X' shares on date of reorganisation

 

B =

Amount of cash received in exchange for Company 'Y' shares

 

Allocation of base cost:

Cash

£28,000

x Base cost (£28,659) = £9,192

   

£87,290

 

 

Back to top



The Shares Element

No tax is payable on this element of the offer until John sells these Company 'Y' shares. CGT may then be payable.

 

The Final Stage

By now, you have worked out the chargeable elements of the reorganisation. All that is left to do is to reorganise the new holding within IRIS Capital Assets.

Method

A new shareholding needs to be ADDED for John’s newly reorganised company,  Company Y.  Enter the date of acquiring the  Company Y shares as  1st March , as you can use the  base cost remaining after the proportion has been used in the calculation of ‘The Cash Element.’ The balance remaining of this  cost is the new base cost of the  Company Y shareholding.

 

Back to top