Selling Shares in France

[londoneye]

Hi everyone

I have some shares which were purchased in UK and which I (ever the optimist) hope to increase substantially in price within the next couple of months and which I might wish to sell.   I have been on several UK share-dealing sites but it appears that you can only set up an on-line account if you are a UK resident, which I no longer am.

Could anyone point me in the direction of where I can sell the shares on-line as a French resident?   Preferably a site in English as I don't want to have to make a split second decision and not entirely understand anything !

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[parsnips]

[quote user="londoneye"]Hi everyone

I have some shares which were purchased in UK and which I (ever the optimist) hope to increase substantially in price within the next couple of months and which I might wish to sell.   I have been on several UK share-dealing sites but it appears that you can only set up an on-line account if you are a UK resident, which I no longer am.

Could anyone point me in the direction of where I can sell the shares on-line as a French resident?   Preferably a site in English as I don't want to have to make a split second decision and not entirely understand anything !

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[/quote]

Hi,

      I was in the same position and have shares registered withn "Equiniti"; having spoken to them about internet or telephone dealing they said ,at first, that as a non-resident I would have to trade by post (obviously useless in today's market),after some discussion they said that provided I gave them a UK "registration" address--I gave them one of my son's--they would allow me to deal by internet and phone and send all paperwork to my french "correspondence " address.

[Anton Redman]

If you have retained a UK bank account thye may well be able to provided an execution only dealing service

[londoneye]

Thanks both - need to get on to it as shares have risen 100% now since I bought them - happy days - not many of those around at the moment !!

[powerdesal]

I suspect the 'The Share Centre' will allow an account as long as they have a UK address to register. Internet dealing is then no problem.  The dealing fees are pretty good too.

[Lollie]

Try Barclays Stockbrokers.

[londoneye]

Thanks for the latest replies.

A couple of supplementary questions if anyone can answer please.

1.   If/when I sell the shares and make a profit, I am assuming (please

correct me if wrong - I would love to be !) that I need to declare the

profit on my tax return as world-wide income and pay the 11% or

thereabouts in the same way that I pay it on my savings interest from

UK ?

2.  I just had a conversation with my bank in France regarding

transferring the shares to a French share-dealing account, and what (I

think!) he told me is as follows:

-   there is an annual fee of around 6 euros

-   capital gains tax is only payable in any year if you sell shares to a value greater than 25,000 euros

- however if you sell your shares for 26,000 euros (for example - I

wish !) then you would pay CG on the entire amount (lesson presumably

being make sure that you only sell shares for 25,000 euros or less in

one year)

-   there is a 0.25% fee which is charged on the value of your shares

held on the last day of the year.   This is the bit I was really

confused about, I asked him several times if I, for example, sold the

shares in June and had no shares in the account at the end of the year

whether the fee applied, and he says not - no shares in account on last

day of year, no fee.    This seems very strange to me and I wonder if I

have misunderstood - is anyone aware of this - actually perhaps it is

not generic but depends on which bank you are with.

Taking all of above into account, it seems that as long as I only sell

shares which amount to less than 25,000 euros in one year then I would

be financially better off selling in France?

Still not sure I have understood it all correctly though - does anyone know please ?!