Capital Gains Tax relief question

Hi.

The IR have contacted me, quering my self-assessment year ending Apr.

The issue in question is that of share options.

Near the end of the previous financial year, in March 2003, I received

I then sold 16,000 of these, using up my CGT relief for that year and keeping back 4,000 with a view to benefitting from next years allowance of Capital Gains Tax Relief, which was then about 7,500 UKP.

Accordingly, come April, I sold the remaining shares. The price of the options was 144.2, the sale price 268.6, which gave 5700 UKP of capital gain.

I thought that this would be covered completely by the CGT relief, and so paid no tax upon the gain.

IR, a few days ago, contacted me.

It is also apparently the case that my employer at the time has informed the IR that this second set of shares was not eligable for relief.

The woman I've been speaking to at the IR has asserted that CGT relief can only be claimed once every three years, and that this is the basis for ineligability.

I have looked for this rule on the IR site and elsewhere, but cannot find it.

I *do* vaguely remember something about "three years" from the conversations I had at the time with the share option specialist at the local IR branch, when it came to filling in my self-assessment; but I remember no details.

I'll be phoning tommorow to follow up about this.

Does anyone know anything about this rule, or anything similar or relevent?

Note that Mannsworth v Jelley occured at that time. I'm not sure if this is relevent or not; I *did* get a lot of capital gains tax relief from it, but that per se would be irrelevent, since the normal relief would have covered the 5700 UKP gain.