capital gains tax - definition of a 'year' for taper relief....

Only guessing here... but I think it means a full 365 days of holding the capital

I believe that it means a complete tax year, 6th April-5th April.

I doubt it. If the regulation meant a complete tax year, it would say "a complete tax year", not just "a complete year".

If you've held an asset for 26 months, say from the middle of May 2002 to the middle of July 2004, this period only contains one complete tax year, namely 2003/04, but still counts as "at least two complete years" for CGT TR purposes.

Quote from:

"Taper relief reduces a chargeable gain according to the number of whole years, see CG17900, (up to a maximum of ten) that an asset has been held. For this purpose a year is any continuous period of twelve months."

Chris

Not very helpful of them to define a year in terms of months, and then not to define months. FTAOD it needs to be said that the months in question do not have to be caledar months in the sense that if an asset is acquired on 15th April and disposed of on 20th April of the following year, one could argue that this only involves eleven whole months (May to March) and that the two part-months of April should be disregarded. Fortunately this is not the case, as is made clear by the following extract from CG17900:

"Where a disposal takes place on the anniversary of the acquisition of the asset, it should be assumed that the year has been completed. If the asset is acquired on 29 February in a leap year, the anniversary date will be 1 March in following years, except leap years when it will be 29 February. No attempt should be made to determine the exact time of day of the acquisition and the disposal."

In message , Ronald Raygun writes

Phew! I could see this thread going on for a long time....

It would be possible for a period which is only a few minutes, or even seconds, longer than 364 days to be deemed a "whole year".

E.g. 2359 on 4th July 2002 to 0001 on 4th July 2003.

It would also be possible for a period which is only a few minutes, or seconds, shorter than 366 days *not* to be deemed a whole year.

E.g. 0001 on 4th July 2003 to 2359 on 3rd July 2004.

You are correct. The expression is "whole years", defined as:

What is a whole year? This is any continuous period of 12 months. It does not have to coincide with a tax year.

Taken from CGT1.PDF page 40.

The Tax Year (April 6 to April 5) is still relevant when adding the "Bonus" year.

Not really, except coincidentally, since none of the "complete years" may contain days prior to 6th April 1998. Where a bonus year is used, the complete years will all necessarily coincide with tax years only if the disposal date happens to fall on a 6th April.